Decisive Darkness

Part One: Majestic

Paul Hynes

First published by Sea Lion Press in 2016

This is a work of fiction. While ‘real-world’ characters may appear, the nature of the divergent story means any depictions herein are fictionalised and in no way an indication of real events. Above all, characterisations have been developed with the primary aim of telling a compelling story.

Preface

The Second World War never ended.

It is with this fact in mind that I hope you will read this book. What is covered throughout this study is the catastrophe that unfolded across Asia, where following on the late summer of 1945 more Japanese died than those of any other nation in the world’s bloodiest conflict. It is a tale of Ketsu-Go, Operation Decisive, the meticulously planned armageddon that the junta at the heart of Japan hoped would save.

It is the story of the plan’s failure and the national suicide that would follow as mindless fanatics locked the door on the burning house. How everything they had come to believe in was manifestly destroyed their own hands. How their descendants refuse to this day to acknowledge the nightmarish effect that their struggle has had on the once unique beauty of Japan, her culture, her role in the world and, most importantly, of her people.

This is a story of darkness, that which lies within the minds of men, and how it was chillingly embraced by those who simply refused to follow any other road, a fanatical devotion to murderous insanity that was befitting of the ‘Decisive’ name that labelled their own belief in national salvation.

It is the darkness which these men inflicted, not only upon the oppressed peoples of Japan’s former empire, the laughably named ‘Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ but also upon their own population and ultimately themselves.

It’s the story of how this same darkness ultimately to infect their enemies, the victors of the war, nominally just, were driven to break every code they had set themselves and unleash horrors they had sworn never to use.

Life is never simply dark, of course, as is the case throughout human history events which bring out the worst in people can bring out the best within others. The wool pulled away from eyes, the deceptions revealed and the revolutions they have caused may never have happened without the rejuvenating force in life which is chaos.

Nothing in history is never truly bathed in light either, the mass movement of people’s, in their individual daily struggles to pursue happiness in life to vast wars, revolutions and all other unbinding events on the global scale affecting millions of people can always be found to be interlinked.

It is for this reason that we find our tale starting with men who felt their nation was an expression of themselves and how in their own suicidal delusions they took an entire people with them.

The Kyujo Coup and the ‘Regime of the Righteous’

In the telling of how Japan’s national disaster unfolded it is important that we recall how closely the nation came to a peace in the late summer of 1945, and how cruelly it was snatched away.

It was clear by the late summer of 1945 that the Japanese empire was facing oblivion. What had once seemed an unstoppable juggernaut, unflinching in their divine destiny to rule all of Asia, now found itself in lockstep with every advance of their increasingly numerous enemies. With four fifths of Japan’s pre-war fleet and shipping sunk or destroyed, the United States of America and the British Commonwealth blockaded Japan with impunity, depriving Japan of the strategic materials that they had went to war to secure, and the food that much of Japan’s population of over 70 million people relied upon.

Japan had gone to war with China originally on the basis of procuring a vast breadbasket which would ensure that none of the localised famines which had blighted rural Japan in the early twentieth century would be repeated. Now these seemed destined to return, as the Japanese state continually lowered rations malnourishment skyrocketed. In 1945 Japan recorded its worst harvest in decades, the nation faced mass starvation.

Swarms of American bombers torched scorched the landscape with little resistance. The Japanese air force, grounded due to the scarcity of fuel and ammunition, could only look up as the night sky was coloured with fire. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians had died in vast air raids that had been visited upon virtually every major Japanese city. Millions more were rendered homeless.

As the Imperial Japanese Navy ceased to be an effective fighting force, American and British ships had little else to do but unload their guns onto the cities and towns of the Japanese coast where bombers could not yet reach. Beginning in July, these bombardments caused fewer casualties than bombing but served to make it clear to the Japanese people that their armed forces where effectively helpless to defend them from allied attack.

The scale of this onslaught was unimaginable, bringing Japan’s economy and infrastructure to its knees, a conclusion to the war had to be reached and quickly, before these factors combined to the ensure the complete collapse of the society that many had gone to war to protect. There were many who had had misgivings about Japan’s initial offensives against the British Empire and the United States, wary of their enemies industrial and military might.

As the war had progressed they had been increasingly vindicated, with the disaster of the American capture of the island of Saipan, which allowed them to establish the bases from which to bomb Japan, their influence increased. Shortly after the defeat at Saipan, Hideki Tojo, one of the major architects of the decision to pursue war beyond China, resigned as Prime Minister. Instead he was replaced with the divisive General Kuniaki Koiso, who promised to give "fundamental reconsideration" to Japan’s present conflict yet failed to make serious headway towards what those in the growing ‘Peace’ camp, judged necessary, a negotiated peace with the Allies. Koiso himself had been replaced in the spring of 1945, following the Japanese failure to hold Okinawa island, the first piece of true Japanese territory the Americans had captured and the final stepping stone in their central Pacific advance. An American invasion of Japan beckoned.

There was only one hope that remained for the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, an inner sanctum within the Cabinet which Koiso had created to better direct the war, the small cabal of men now in charge of directing Japanese policy. They believed, to varying degrees, that if they could hold on for long enough, American and British casualties took their toll on American and British public opinion. Though the battle of Okinawa had been a disaster for the Japanese, the American forces had endured over 82,000 casualties, a grim showcase of the coming attractions that an invasion of Japan would offer.

Japanese propaganda infected the minds of those who dispersed it, that the allies fundamentally didn’t have the stomach for such casualties, forcing the leaders of the Allied nations to accept a negotiated peace contrary to their demand for unconditional surrender. This belief was based on the notion of attrition, that as long as stunning defeats could be continuously inflicted on the enemy then Japan’s own suffering could be offset. This was a belief that had grown more prominent yet also more fanciful. Despite the fact that Japan’s prospects had worsened, the allied reiteration of their desire for unconditional surrender, the Potsdam declaration.

The declaration was the result of the Potsdam conference, held after the final surrender of Japan’s German ally, was misread as an allied openness to leave some areas of Japanese society and governmental structure intact, including, and most importantly to the Japanese, the imperial system. The Allies were seen to be compromising, furthermore the Soviet Union had not signed the declaration, indicating that they would continue to remain neutral in the Pacific conflict and perhaps mediate a ceasefire. Some believed they could even be brought onto Japan’s side, given the ongoing deterioration of relations in the wake of Germany’s collapse.

It was hoped that a final decisive victory could be won on Japanese soil to offset the last two years of humiliation, would make the Americans increasingly malleable to what could be described as an honourable peace. These factors would contribute to the dawn that would follow Japan’s long night of defeat.

It would only grow darker. On August 6th the Americans destroyed the city of Hiroshima with an Atomic Bomb, a bomb the Japanese themselves had attempted to create but had lacked the proper resources to produce. Two days later the Soviet Union declared war, launching a vast invasion of Japanese occupied northern China, as well as within the Japanese homes islands themselves as they landed on southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. On August 9th, despite hopes that the Americans might have only had one atomic bomb, a second strike destroyed the port of Nagasaki.

As the terrible shock of these events took hold the resolve of those who supported peace at any cost increased whilst those who insisted there must be terms or, indeed, no surrender at all began to waver. By August 12th, after intense and increasingly heated discussion, it had become clear to a majority of the Supreme War Council that the situation was now so hopeless that unconditional surrender had become the only acceptable way to proceed. Nonetheless there were those who insisted that Japan must shrug off these further blows and continue to resist, calls that came most loudly from General Korechika Anami, minister for war. A former bureaucrat, Anami was well known for being calm and composed in his manner but his fanaticism was unmatched in the higher echelons of Japanese society, he had climbed the ranks during the Japanese invasion of China and had been a leading proponent of expanding the struggle into Southeast Asia against the Americans and Europeans. Despite the ever worsening situation, he had become the leading defender of continued struggle against increasing doubts from his colleagues on the Supreme Council. The Soviet entry into the war and the Atomic bombings hardened opinions on both sides.

An extraordinary way to break the deadlock was found by those who favoured surrender, the Emperor was asked to give his own opinion. Despite being head of state, Emperor Hirohito had found throughout his reign that his position was largely titular, those who wished to venerate him as a God often being the most ardent that his opinions be ignored in the living realm. With his cabinet divided, they were told to listen, as he declared that Japan must endure the unendurable and surrender, unconditionally, for the first time in her history. In the early hours of August 14th the foreign ministry transmitted orders to its embassies in Switzerland and Sweden to accept the Allied terms of surrender.

Later that day, the embassies would receive a contradictory message, for despite a brief few hours of hope, some had chosen to ignore the Emperors will. The Second World War was not over.

The forceful seizure of power by the army, and the birth of the self-proclaimed ‘Regime of the Righteous’ was an entirely expected, if feared, reaction to the Emperor’s proclamation. General Anami, who would go on to become Prime Minister as Japan’s final battle commenced, has become something of a fictional bogeyman in most western understanding of those final, terminal stages of the Japanese empire. His role in the coup could be seen as essential, but the coup itself had very little connection to the War minister right until the very end.

Attempted coup d'état’s had been common in recent Japanese history, though few were as successful. The roots of the Gigun regime can be found in the agitations and patriotic delusions of young officers within the imperial military had often caused those which preceded it. These were men brought up to revere the Emperor and trained in the knowledge that only they could crush his enemies. To them the concepts of democracy and civilian government were contemptuous at the best of times, when those same institutions announced their plans to accept defeat and surrender for the first time in Japanese history, some sort of incident had become all but a certainty. The Emperor’s personal intervention in favour of the surrender had made any hope of success seem bleak, yet only if it was accepted that every member of the Supreme War Council obeyed their Emperors wishes.

The personal intervention of General Korechika Anami , the Japanese War Minister and de facto head of the Armed Forces, would prove pivotal in transforming what might have been an isolated incident into the final subjugation of the last pretences of Japanese civilian government. With his backing, the perpetrators of the coup could go forward with the marshalled support of the majority of the Japanese forces in the Tokyo area, the Eastern District Army.

Whilst it was no secret to anyone that Anami continued to believe that Japan’s empire could be largely preserved in the wake of a decisive battle on Japanese soil, not to mention his own liability for war crimes due to previous atrocities committed in Japanese occupied China it was assumed that his reverence to the Emperor indicated that he would acquiesce to the sovereign’s decision to back unconditional surrender. Despite the calamity that unfolded with his decision to ignore the Emperor’s will, what exactly made him discard this sworn duty to obey the Emperor is the subject of long standing dispute.

An increasingly shrinking minority have argued for decades that Anami himself at this time had been overcome with delusions of grandeur and wished to execute the Royal Family and re-establish the Shogunate, using the legitimacy of a crushing victory against the Allies to do so. A slightly more frivolous portion of popular historians have ascribed it to one of the coups lead perpetrators, Kenji Hatanaka, a man known for his silver tongue and literary talent, the bizarre story goes that he made such a rousing case in favour of ignoring the Emperor’s wishes and strengthening his own belief in the decisive battle by regaling him with poetry of the glorious victories of the Russo-Japanese War. A more grounded analysis points to Masahiko Takeshita, Anami’s brother in law who enjoyed a close personal relationship with the general, a man who would have been able to focus a great deal of personal time on convincing the General of the plotters virtuous cause, if he had not been helping to organise the plot itself.

In spite of Takehita’s potential influence, the general historical consensus is that Anami’s actions can be attributed to a fatal misreading of the Potsdam Declaration. There had been some pressure on President Truman for the largely American drafted document to give some mention of American intentions towards the future of Japan’s Emperor, or at least an implication of the coming destruction that would be caused by the newly discovered Atomic Bomb. Many American diplomats hoped that allowing Japan to be seen to preserve its independence would be honourable enough to make surrender palatable to the Japanese government or at least that the power of the bomb would let them know that their defeat was inevitable. Neither made the final draft of the document, with the declaration largely repeated the condemnation of the Japanese enemy and the stated Allied aim of Japanese surrender without assurances or conditions of any type.

Whilst post-war sources have shown that the Allies had little enthusiasm for putting Emperor Hirohito on trial, their failure to mention this, and the stated aim within the declaration of "eliminating for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest" led Anami to conclude that the Allies planned to entirely restructure Japanese society, much like they were already doing in Germany, and that the Emperor had been misled about this fact by the ‘traitors’ in the peace supporting faction of the Supreme Council, individuals that he would now move against.

On the Morning of August 15th, with Japan’s intent to surrender already broadcast to the Allies through the Swiss and Swedish embassies, the Japanese people heard a different announcement. Prime Minister Suzuki Kantarō had launched a coup in the early hours of the morning in conjunction with secret negotiations with the Allies for him to replace the Emperor as sovereign and rule an occupied Japan as their puppet, however the vigilance of the Japanese Armed Forces, and the conviction of the Japanese people had stood in his way, the Emperor was now safe, and Suzuki was under arrest awaiting trial with his fellow co-conspirators, the new Government under Prime Minister Anami would now oversee the war to its victorious conclusion.

This statement was only partially true, there was a coup ongoing that night, yet it was nothing to do with the Prime Minister. Without resistance, the Eastern District Army forces under Anami’s command had taken control of the city and had surrounded the Imperial Palace, where pro-Anami forces silently awaited orders to storm the ancient building and ‘rescue’ their Emperor. Prime Minister Suzuki, Foreign Minister Togo, and other individuals associated with the peace faction where arrested and speedily removed from the city on a strange tour of the outlying countryside until they eventually found themselves in a cavernous bunker overlooking Sagami Bay. The dignity of house arrest was withheld until the coup could be deemed a success.

The Emperor’s acquiescence to being taken hostage by those who had openly disobeyed his desire for peace would doom Japan to continued conflict. With his ‘support’ resistance was rendered treacherous and have thus caused many to blame the Emperor personally for the events that unfolded. Condemnations of the cowardice or at the very least docility of Emperor’s actions should be held in check however, from a heavily outnumbered position he can be considered as accepting only the inevitable. Had his guards fought there would only have been a bloodbath, one in which members of his own family may have been killed. Regardless of his own survival instinct, had he seen what was to come it is possible he would have acted differently, but as it was his calm exit from the palace into the hands of the plotters effectively justified the coup.

Given the Emperor’s surrender, the theatrics of the coup, the fictional plot of a Suzuki conspiracy and the arrest of the peace faction, might have seemed unnecessary, but for the plotters at the time this security was not apparent, for Japanese had already announced their surrender after all.

To the Allies the message was brief, reiterating the former Japanese peace terms, including the retention of the Emperor, no occupation of the Home Islands, and that only the Japanese would be responsible for disarmament and war crimes trials. With the Emperor effectively being held under house arrest, and the peace faction in the process of being purged from the highest echelons of Japanese society, the hope of peace which had seemed so assured the previous day now appeared to be further than ever.

The unenviable task of telling the American public that the war was in fact not over fell to a dismayed President Truman who made his best efforts to relay to his own sadness to the American people but also his resolve to see the war through to a conclusive end. On the streets the sorrow quickly turned to anger, with a clear target in mind.

The Japanese-American community, which had spent years in American internment under suspicion of being enemy agents, had been undergoing a process of release since the spring. No longer considered a threat, many now found themselves endangered by the angry drunken mobs who had received the news that the war would continue. The violence spread throughout the west coast and sporadically moved east, as all people of East Asian appearance now found themselves vulnerable to a wave of hate attacks by American servicemen and civilians who were often still drunk from their celebrations of ‘victory’.

Whilst some have said that the worst of the rioting which followed these events has largely been exaggerated for dramatic effect on the basis of a few memorable photos of servicemen rioting in San Francisco, by August 16th there were already measures being pursued to return the Japanese population of the west coast, recently returned from internment, back into camps for the sake of law and order.

With the small gatherings of citizens baying for blood outside of the White House gates, Truman had had to embody calm in public in the hope that the American people would follow his lead despite the fact that, as he and many of his colleagues would later admit, he was privately seething at the fact that the Japanese had left him to look like a fool. A cruel joke had been played on the American people and he had been an unwilling participant, promising that the bloodshed was now over only to have to inform the relieved citizenry their sons were now very much back in the firing line. Despite having only become President in April, he was well aware of the fact that the longer the war now progressed the more embittered the American public would become, not only against the Japanese but against his own administration. For all it may seem strange in the present, Truman was genuinely worried at the time that this would be the defining moment of his Presidency, yet already he was beginning to show signs of the greater destructive tendency that would make him America’s most controversial President to this day.

Shortly after hearing the news of the aborted peace, Truman ordered the next bomb to be used as quickly as possible on Tokyo, to wipe out the new Government and leave the survivors with no illusions as to the scope of American power, he was quickly brought his senses. Truman’s secretary of state, George C. Marshall, pointed out that bombing Tokyo would likely destroy the Imperial Palace, and potentially take the Emperor with it, inspiring the remnants of the Japanese government to resist all the more fanatically. At this juncture there was still a great deal of hope amongst some in the Truman administration that the political situation in Japan was in flux yet was still salvageable enough that a response which could be construed as an existential attack was not to be advised. There was also the less nuanced reality of the destruction of vast swathes of Tokyo by American bombing in the early months of 1945, there simply wasn’t enough left to burn for the use of America’s only unused atomic bomb to be acceptable.

It was agreed that a third bombing would, and effectively had, to take place, both to bolster American morale after the devastating news that the war was not over, and to give the Japanese the impression that the Americans had a limitless supply of bombs that they would continue to drop until the Japanese surrendered, a “rain of ruin” that Truman had promised shortly before Anami’s coup. The target would also take on a strategic role, striking the Japanese preparations for defence of the Home Islands should America need to invade.

Captain William “Deak” Parsons, the man in overall charge of the transportation and handling of the bombs had planned and organized the assembly facilities on Tinian island to handle a steady stream of bombs in the wake of the Hiroshima attack, yet this was not yet feasible. The plutonium production facilities at the Hanford Site, the key to America’s young nuclear arsenal, was falling behind the promise of a continuous stream of new bombs despite working at full capacity, only one bomb was readily available on August 15th, the essential materials of which were already on their way.

Specially designed to carry the ‘Fat Man’ devices which had already destroyed Nagasaki and would form the basis of the continuing atomic assault on Japan, the B-29’s nicknamed Spook and Jabbet were ordered to make the vast trip across the Pacific to the United States to transport the core of the third bomb (unceremoniously dubbed ‘Fat Man #2’) along with the other necessary components within hours of the breaking news of Japan’s non-surrender. The dispersed Manhattan project, the heavily secretive source of America’s first atomic bombs, speedily equipped the two bombers before they once again flew across the Pacific to Tinian Island. There the bomb would await preparations for its final destination, over the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.

Unlike most Japanese cities in 1945, the war had not actually reached Kokura. Isolated air raids had taken place in some areas, more for psychological reasons than anything else, despite the economic value of the city. Only two months previously, the nearby city of Yawata had been victimized by one of the notorious American firebombings that almost every large Japanese city had had to endure in the last year. The damage to Kokura was largely psychological as their sister city burned in the night, unaware that had they met Yawata’s fate the far worse blight the American’s had ins tore for them may have been avoided. Kokura, with the islands largest arsenals, railroad shops, and ordnance works, all effectively intact, was an obvious target for the list of identified targets that American planners had drawn up when considering where the atomic bomb may be used.

The city had had been the target of the original Fat Man on August 9th but heavy cloud cover had spared the city in favour of the bombs secondary target, the port of Nagasaki. Had the war ended on August 14th the towns absurd luck of surviving an Atomic attack due to bad weather might have been celebrated by later generations, but the successful coup had only ensured a delay for the city on the targeting schedule. On August 21st, luck, and time, ran out.

The hundreds of American and Dutch prisoners of war who had been made to labour in the towns ordnance works, unaware of the fate of Hiroshima, had been confused on August 9th when their guards had fled to the nearest shelters at the site of only two B-29’s, now they ran again, some of them hysterically weeping as ‘The Great Artiste’, flew by Captain Frederick Bock, cast its payload over Kokura’s railway station. For a few brief moments of searing pain their confusion was ended, before their world was ripped apart. Whilst the original Fat Man’s power had been somewhat shielded by the mountains surrounding Nagasaki, its brother would send a shockwave equivalent of twenty three thousand tons of dynamite unhindered across the landscape.

As with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the initial fireball simply vaporised those in the vicinity of the railway station, and left many others in the surrounding area to stagger around blinded and in flames, their skin melting in the intense heat as their wretched screams added to the screech of the blast, the thunderous noise of a door closing in heaven, before their bodies were torn to pieces along with the buildings around them. Tens of thousands more would join them as the blast spread destruction across the land at the speed of sound. By the time the infamous mushroom cloud had formed to tower above the skyline, over half of the area’s population of 178,000 were either dead or seriously injured. In the following days the toll would continue to climb as those badly injured succumbed without any medical assistance, the area’s hospitals had been so badly damaged in the blast as to render them useless, many of the staff unable to help themselves let alone others. As blackened rain drops began to fall from the sky, even those with the world’s most advanced medical knowledge would not have been able to comprehend with the implications of what it meant to the blasts survivors. The hastily nicknamed ‘Atomic Sickness’ would soon begin to claim its first victims amongst those who had believed they were lucky to have survived.

Whilst the news of the third bombing and the images of the Kokura inferno did indeed boost the morale of the American home front, the Anami regime did not flinch. Those who held the belief that their righteousness allowed them to regard the Japanese population as mere pawns were never likely to blink at the perception of an unending supply of American bombs. Their goal was to prepare Japan for an apocalyptic battle to the last subject if that was it took to force their enemies to negotiate, it mattered little whether to the destruction was atomic or otherwise when they continued to demand the unconditional surrender of Japan, a fate worse than death to Anami and many of his clique.

Practical moves, however where taken to disperse as much industry and personnel from potential targets as possible. At the centre of this was the beginning of the relocation of the junta and their administrative inheritance from Tokyo to the recently completed Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters.

Based in the mountains surrounding the city of Nagano, the Headquarters was designed to survive heavy bombing raids, it was hoped that the complex could also protect the Emperor and the Supreme Council from an Atomic attack. To this effect the Korean labourers forced to build the underground lair were put under further pressure to complete construction, going for days without proper access to food or water with little time to sleep, hour after hour of arduous work. Those who had not yet died from exhaustion, dehydration or work related injury where executed when the site was deemed appropriately secure for the junta and their Emperor. It was deemed necessary for there to be as little knowledge of the underground headquarters as possible, they could not reveal any secrets they weren’t supposed to if they were dead.

As moves to minimise the effect of any further atomic attacks went on in earnest, attempts were also under way to limit American use of their new found weapon. On the 28th of August, one week after Kokura’s destruction, a communique from the junta was relayed to the American embassy in Switzerland. Any hope that a third bombing might have shaken the Japanese resolve was now proven to be naïve, there was a recognition of the bombing but only in that hundreds of Americans had died in the Kokura attack, and that from now on the 30,000 western allied prisoners in Japanese captivity would be moved to the centres of Japan’s main cities, becoming human shields. In the instance of Kokura the Americans had accidentally killed their own men, with the next bomb they would know full well that they were likely risking Allied servicemen’s lives alongside Japanese subjects.

It was hoped that this would demonstrate Japanese resolve to the American government, without actively admitting this betrayal of international law to the world. Of course the American’s could let the public know, but the junta’s perceptions of American moral weakness implied that this would have its own dividends. Anami might have been led to believe that his ploy had worked, it would take another month before Yamaguchi became the fourth Japanese city reduced to rubble by a single bomb, in that period the junta could have been prone to believe that their righteousness had been proven by their ability to take full advantage of American squeamishness.

In reality, there was little time spent at all on the bombs that might be coming from the United States as all attention quickly turned to the north.

For on August 28th, 1945, the same day Anami relayed his intentions to stand firm against American attacks, the scattered and confused garrison of Rumoi scrambled around in terror as odd looking planes let loose a torrent of bombs, diving down on their targets and obliterating them, as they had done to so many of Japan’s former allies.

From the foggy coast of western Hokkaido, a flotilla of ships emerged.

And they flew the Red Flag.

Northern Storm: The Soviet Invasion of Hokkaido

On August 28th, 1945, the invasion of Japan began.

To the shock of the Japanese Supreme War Council, now huddled under the mountains of Nagano, it did not arrive in the area of the ‘Decisive Battle’, where the Japanese had planned and prepared so meticulously, nor was the force carried by the armada the Americans had amassed to strike that same area, easily the largest in human history.

Instead, it would be six small assault craft escorted by the modest four destroyers and six torpedo boats of the Red Banner Pacific Fleet, carrying the first echelon of the 87th Rifle Corps, as they charged into the port of Rumoi on western Hokkaido. Hours earlier Soviet airborne forces had dropped just outside the area, securing the town’s airfield that would facilitate the hastily planned Soviet attack.

In the two hours it had taken to land the remainder of the lead rifle division, the small port had already been secured with little resistance. Unlike the larger forces gathering on Honshu and Kyushu for the expected American invasion, the Japanese forces available for the defence of the island consisted of a mere two divisions, neither of whom were based anywhere near the Soviet landing, an American invasion from the east of the island had seemed far more plausible for Japanese planners yet unable to accommodate for the fact that Japan had been at war with the Soviet Union for the past fortnight.

The Soviet threat had not been entirely ignored. Substantial Japanese forces were based around the coastal fortress of Wakkanai on the islands northernmost point, in the belief that the Soviets would only have the capacity to transport a force directly across the La Perouse strait that lay between Hokkaido and Sakhalin. Sakhalin, split between Japan and Russia for over forty years, had finally fallen to the Red Army in the days of confusion following Anami’s coup. It had seemed impossible that they would be able to move further south so quickly with their inadequate Pacific fleet.

Though previous Soviet naval landings in the preceding weeks, where they had almost simultaneously landed on Korea, Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands off the coast of Japan, would have given ome indication of the threat facing Hokkaido, the Japanese defenders had suffered from poor communication with their beleaguered garrisons. Thus as the first Soviet paratroopers fell from the sky most within the Japanese army had remained blissfully unaware that since the early spring of 1945, the greatest naval transfer in history was taking place between the Americans and the Soviets. ‘Project Hula’ had been launched in the name of greatly increasing the Soviets naval capacity before their promised entry into the Pacific war, with dozens of American ships changing hands across the Bering Strait that divides Alaska with Siberia. The newfound Soviet ability to mount daring naval landings across the northern limit was being exploited to the fullest extent.

Had the Japanese been prepared it is entirely possible that the hastily launched Soviet landing would have ended disastrously for the Red Army, their ignorance had left the Rumoi region with only a single coastal defence site, based twenty miles away from the town, unable to offer any support as its occupants mercilessly trampled by swarms of Pe-2’s and Il-2’s that had brought Japan’s European allies such sorrow.

The four Soviet submarines tasked with alerting their comrades to any Japanese naval response were satisfactorily bored as they continuously reported that they saw nothing amiss. Whilst even a year beforehand the Japanese navy would have made any such landing a suicide mission for a Soviet flotilla, the once mighty fleet had been so relentlessly battered by the navies of the Soviets Anglo-American allies, that they remaining ships had all been pulled south, awaiting the expected American invasion, the same went for the Japanese air force, whose few units in the area c could offer little resistance to wave after wave of Soviet dive bombers and fighters. Thus the Soviets quickly linked up with their airborne forces. All that was left in defence of the port and region was the militias of the Civilian ‘Volunteer’ Corps, woefully unequipped and inexperienced old men and young boys who had been press ganged to make-up for the deficit in real troops.

Despite fierce proclamations of patriotism from the Anami regime, this initial outing of Japan’s subject army ended in woeful embarrassment. Expected to face battle hardened veterans of the European conflict with little more than knives, homemade bombs and in more farcical cases spears made from bamboo shoots, many chose to simply stay at home, or to flee when the Kempetai, the notorious Japanese secret police, came to march them towards the expanding Soviet foothold. Others chose to resist, many more were forced to, as they were marched out in columns to drive the Russians back into the sea with their motley arsenal, only to meet a predictable fate. On the first day the Soviets had secured the region and continued to land further troops from an array of craft, they had easily despatched the initial whimper of Japanese resistance.

From the Fifth Area Army headquarters in Sapporo, the island’s capital city, panic reigned. The Soviets had overestimated the strength of the Japanese, but the Japanese commanders now thrust into combat were aware of exactly how measly their forces were. As the Soviets consolidated their position, frantic calls to the Supreme Council went out, when could reinforcements be sent? The inquiries went unanswered, the junta had not expected a Soviet invasion, more preoccupied with consolidating their own grip on power it was better to reassure themselves that their northern flant was safe from the supposedly tiny Soviet naval forces, now that it had arrived there was little that could be done.

Since early August the Americans had been heavily mining the Tsushima strait between Honshu and Hokkaido, whilst also hammering the transport links which connected Northern Honshu from the more populous south, and destroying most large Japanese ships in the area. Whilst this had been done in the name of separating the south of Japan from the majority of their domestic food production, it had also rendered any meaningful reinforcement of Hokkaido impossible. Though vast numbers of kamikaze craft were being built and concentrated on Kyushu for the expected American invasion, it was considered unfeasible to transport a significant proportion of these to destroy the Soviet flotilla, given America’s total air superiority over the Home Islands and the fact that most types were designed or only had increasingly scarce fuel allocated with a one-way trip in mind To the dismay of Sapporo , the eventual reply from the Supreme Council only reiterating these facts. “There can be no meaningful reinforcement of your position until the situation in the South has been resolved.” Hokkaido had been effectively abandoned.

Although the Japanese situation appeared bleak, the fight was not over yet.

Whilst striking south to capture the poorly defended Sapporo seemed attractive to Soviet planners it was not yet realistic. The landing in Rumoi had taken place at the very limits of Soviet air cover, if they struck south before squadrons could be established on the island, they would have to go without that critical advantage, supply also raised concerns, unhindered the Soviets would eventually be able to reliably supply three divisions from Rumoi but if the forces already on the island where to advance south to quickly, supply would become dangerously unreliable making the front vulnerable to even a weak Japanese counter-attack. To secure the island as quickly as possible the decision had been made to move North and West, to secure an air presence on the island and improve the supply capability, the strategy that was necessary, but would also put the advance right into the path of the waiting Japanese forces.

In the north the troops of the Japanese 42nd division were little more experienced or better equipped than the civilian militia’s, however their greater knowledge of the land and the time they had to prepare allowed them to delay the Soviet advance until they were eventually broken by the Soviet air force, nonetheless the Wakkanai fortress held out bitterly for several days after resistance in the rest of the island had ceased, and only capitulated after being stormed by Soviet troops in late September. In the west the battle hardened forces of the 7th Division made the fight in the mountains around Toshio and Tomuraushi as nightmarish as they had for the US Marine Corps in the jungles of Guadalcanal. Despite the Japanese inferiority in both numbers and equipment, the battle for Hokkaido would become a bitterly fought and protracted affair as the initial Soviet advances in August turned to the high casualty assaults as they attempted to cross though the islands’ central mountain passes. Superior Japanese knowledge of their home allowed them to exploit Soviet logistical weaknesses with the close quarters combat in the narrow confines of the mountainous terrain minimised the Soviet advantages in armour, artillery and air power.

Whilst the few kamikaze aircraft available on the island had had little discernible impact on the Soviet ability to supply their troops, Japanese suicide troops where a source of constant concern. Though not uncommon for Japanese troops who had run out of ammunition to throw themselves at the enemy in one last defiant act, these were specifically prepared groups of young, often incredibly young, people who were considered far more useful as thinking bombs than troops that Japan could not afford to arm or feed. Grizzled veterans of the eastern front would relate in later life that they had presumed that a Hitler youth armed with a rocket launcher would be the most depressing sight they would ever see, before they had witnessed a Japanese schoolgirl tumble underneath a tank.

Soviet casualties began to multiply as the dug-in Japanese made the most of their knowledge of the local terrain and their willingness to sacrifice scores of their own men. Only the knowledge that, as further forces were landed, there was no chance of the Red Army losing a battle of attrition kept Soviet officers from falling into despair at the bloodbath being permeated by the enemy. The Japanese had no means to supplant their own losses, nor did they have the ability to supplant an ever dwindling supply of ammunition and fuel in the face of perpetual Soviet attacks. Despite the fanaticism of individual Japanese troops and the endurance of their largely press-ganged civilian comrades, their ability to conduct modern warfare gradually withered into nothing. With meaningful resistance shattered, the Red Army rampaged across the north and east of the island, destroying anything that could be considered useful to the sporadic and often individual acts of continuing Japanese defence. It is difficult to estimate whether in these acts the Red Army killed more Japanese civilians than the Japanese army had in sending them to fight.

Defiant cries of fighting till the last subject echoed throughout the streets of Sapporo as the Fifth Area Army’s officers fled the island via submarine whilst its beleaguered defenders chose to flee to fight another day than fight the type urban battle that the Soviet veterans had known so well from the European conflict. By early October the island had been largely secured, with the only resistance left hidden in the mountains, diminished to little more than a guerrilla force. Those who had defended Hokkaido had largely been inexperienced, young or very old soldiers, many of whom had fought bravely but lacked the same resolve to die for the Emperor, especially against hopeless odds. Many had been threatened with death if they did not fight in the ‘Voltunteer’ Fighting Corps, a chilling prelude of the junta’s willingness to use their own population as human bullets yet also the population’s unwillingness to play along with their apocalyptic visions. It was largely for this reasons that the Soviets now found in their possession several thousand prisoners of war.

Held for over a week in barns and cattle sheds with little fuel or foodstuffs, conditions for the Prisoners were painfully grim, worsened only by a prospect of imminent death, or worse, the Gulag. It was thus to the great puzzlement of individual groups of dozens scattered around Hokkaido, when Soviet troops arrived at their holding areas bearing not only much need food and fuel but also cigarettes, vodka, and often an accordion. Unlike most of their stone faced guards, these Russians seemed far more adept in the Japanese language, and together the captors and the captured warmed themselves around fires, ate, drank, and even sang. Drinking even further, laughter and stories broke out, and in some cases even dancing. In the morning the merriment continued, breakfast was served not just to the guards but to the prisoners as well, and again many ate together. The prisoners were encouraged to join in games of Football, and in one occasion, the Red Army even managed to scrounge together a crude baseball side. Meals became more regular, as did activities, all flowing into a skyrocketing rise in morale, and a vastly improved rapport with their captors.

Around this time the speakers would come, sometimes civilians, though usually Japanese soldiers in odd uniforms proclaiming themselves to be officers of a new league. They would condemn the Imperial system that had oppressed them, lied to them, starved them, then sent them off to die against a more numerous and better equipped foe for their own feudal delusions. They condemned the American and British imperialists, who treated the Japanese as sub-human, who had unleashed weapons of nightmarish quantities against women and children, and who now planned a war of extermination against the Kanto Plain before indenting the survivors into the bourgeoisie system. They extolled the virtues of the Soviet Union, of the Red Army, and the sickle that they had swept across Asia, bringing a final end to the imperial system that had kept so many Japanese down, of the downfall of the Meiji, of the Rising Sun that would glow over all of Japan, the risen sun of Socialism.

After these lectures a choice was presented, prisoners could renounce their allegiance to the Emperor and join the ‘Japanese People’s Emancipation League’, be moved to more comfortable lodgings, and receive three meals a day. Or they could endorse their current ‘Imperialist’ status, and be left behind in conditions similar to the squalor they had had to endure before meeting their newfound friends. The first order of business for the overwhelming number who had chosen the first option was usually to beat those who had chosen the second, often to death, before more vodka was poured, and the party continued.

In his new Sapporo office Sanzo Nosaka admired these reports with glee. His time in China had paid off well, and the green recruits had been even more receptive to his indoctrination campaigns than those whom he had first used them upon when he had been sent to work for Mao. Now the League was advancing beyond just a few shaky units and propaganda stunts, soon it would be the basis of a fighting force that would descend upon the remnants of the Imperial society that had hunted, tortured, and killed so many of his comrades. Rising like the phoenix from the ashes of infighting and oppression, he and his colleagues would soon follow, to make the nightmares of so many in the Anami regime a reality.

Quagmire: The Prelude to Operation Majestic

Like their Japanese enemies, the Americans had been shocked by the daring Soviet invasion, an operation which went beyond the limits of the agreed terms at Yalta, where it had been stated that the southern part of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands would be handed over to the Soviet Union, but that there they would stop. Now they had gone further, a reality made all the more frustrating to the Truman administration by the fact that the Soviet invasion had been enabled largely by their own transfer of ships as part of Project Hula, where the Americans had sought to improve Soviet naval capacity in the Pacific to allow them an amphibious capability in the region but one meant only for the takings stated at Yalta.

The Soviet response to American enquiries into what exactly they thought they were doing was typically vague. Neither their declaration of war or the use of the new American weapon had forced the Japanese into surrender, thus their ‘liberation’ of Hokkaido had fallen within the allowance given for ‘contingencies’ agreed at Potsdam; that further, previously unplanned, operations may go ahead if the situation so required. In this action they were simply doing their best to inflict a devastating blow on the enemy that would finally bring them to the table, and endeavour in which they expected American support. When asked of their future intentions for the island they were reluctant to say anything other than the current situation would require them to occupy the island until the conclusion of the conflict with Japan. When asked if they had plans for any further ‘contingencies’, the reply was, once again, non-committal.

The fear of whether or not Stalin had a plan to move even further south and land on Honshu was now genuine. Whilst the Japanese had significant forces on the main Home Island they were largely focused on the south, and with their own attacks on the Japanese transport system they were liable to stay there. If they could land, it was quite possible the Soviets could occupy a substantial part of the islands north, and then who knows how much further if the Americans didn’t act?

Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, was as comprehensive as it was complex. The culmination of over two years of work, it envisaged two massive amphibious landings which would dwarf anything that had gone before them. The plan ultimately was aimed at a landing on the lowlands of the Kanto Plain, where Tokyo and the majority of Japan’s population and industry could be taken out of the war, on the largest island of Honshu. To achieve this goal they would first have to land on the southern island of Kyushu, where they could establish an ample number of airfields to ensure American troops could rely on constant air support when on the march to Tokyo. Thus Downfall was split into two operations, ‘Olympic’ would be the codename for the invasion of Kyushu whilst ‘Coronet’ would be used for the latter invasion of Honshu.

Olympic was not a well-loved plan, and not simply because of the logistical demands of its sheer scale. Ever since the summer there had been growing evidence to show that the Japanese strength on Kyushu had been underestimated , that they had successfully placed 14 divisions on the island, or over 600,000 men, at the very least equal to the number of troops the Americans had planned to land on the island. In the minds of most of the American Admiralty, the most prominent of whom where Admiral’s King and Nimitz, this only confirmed what they had been saying all along, that an invasion of Japan was a foolhardy objective and that the planned Operation Downfall should be scrapped in favour of a continued blockade.

It’s possible the naval argument may have won out in other circumstances, Olympic was glaringly obvious from a Japanese perspective, not only in its broad intentions but also in the fact that the landing areas could be easily guessed. Even the name ‘Olympic’ had to be altered to ‘Majestic’ as fears grew that the Japanese were becoming increasingly aware of the planned invasion. However, the projections of high casualties, growing Japanese strength and doubts about whether the operation could even succeed were not the only factors informing the Truman administrations decision.

The Soviets beating the Americans onto the Home Islands had been a serious blow to prestige, and the major threat of a partly or wholly communist Japan that had arisen from it could now not be ignored. Truman concluded that America could no longer afford to sit back and wait for the Japanese to starve, at this point it was still projected that the Japanese had over a year’s supply of food left in reserve, the strategy was now simply too slow and indecisive, if less costly. Now it had become important that both the international community and the public saw the Americans also storming the Japanese Home Islands, and that the Americans had an immediate presence in the area should the Soviets attempt a coup. Mac Arthur’s stance that the Japanese forces on the island had been overestimated was privately endorsed by Truman, who also stressed the need to end the war by at least 1946, something the blockade strategy could not ensure. Downfall was back on, with the invasion of Kyushu due to take place on November 1st.

The delays Downfall would go on to face were not unprecedented, the November date was entirely arbitrary and put great stress on the logistical amassing of men and material going on across the Pacific to be ready a month in advance. More concerning was the fact that the weather wasn’t playing ball. In 1274, and 1281 Japan had stood at the mercy of a mighty foreign power preparing to cross the ocean. Though brave, the Japanese knew that the hordes of Kublai Khan bettered them in both numbers and in quality, and that if the Mongols could cross the Asian mainland to the Japanese home islands then conquest would be assured. However they would not cross, as Raijin, Japan’s protective God of Thunder sat atop the clouds and hurled lightning bolts at the incoming fleets, destroying them before they could defeat the Japanese, crippled by the ‘Divine Wind’ by which the Japanese now nicknamed their suicide aircraft, a supposed spiritual successor to Japan’s divine protectors. However it was folly to believe they could match the God of Thunder himself, in October he would remind them of their arrogance.

Typhoon Louise had first been spotted on October the 2nd as she formed around the Caroline Islands. Initially ignored, her unexpected turn north was not met with much concern as she slowed down, only to intensify, to the horror of American meteorologists, as she passed over Okinawa on October 9th. The staging area for the invasion of Kyushu, thought to have largely avoided the harsh weather seasons, was now struck with 140 mph winds. The typhoon passed and returned over the island for three days, wrecking almost every building above ground, rendering over a million troops and personnel homeless in the process. Dozens of ships awaiting the invasion were forced ashore only to be pounded into scrap by the huge waves of the storm. Dozens of planes were smashed, torn from their runways in impromptu flights, before being hurled back to Earth. By the time it was safe for medical ships to arrive, 4000 were dead, and several thousand more were seriously wounded, with bodies clinging onto wreckage still being washed onto the beaches of Buckner Bay. From the wreckage and the horror came the already clear conclusion, with dozens of ships and hundreds of aircraft destroyed or damaged, the invasion of Kyushu could not occur in November. It was estimated that it could take as long as 45 days to repair the Typhoon’s damage, delaying Majestic to just before Christmas.

In normal circumstances this would have been unacceptable, moving back Majestic ultimately meant moving back Operation Coronet, the invasion of southern Honshu, from early March to mid-April, far too close to the monsoon season, where an advance over large parts of the Kanto Palin would become impossible. Whilst it was clear the Japanese had focused most of their efforts on the defence of Kyushu, a fight in flooded fields, with air superiority hindered from cloud cover should have been unacceptable and indeed was the reason that the Kyushu invasion had been moved ahead by a month to begin with. However these were not normal circumstances, American prestige had been badly weakened by the Soviet invasion from the invasion, and the need to land some troops, somewhere, where they could be adequately covered from the air, remained the most pressing concern. Despite even more emboldened protests by King and Nimitz, Truman indicated that they would press on. American engineers had worked miracles before, Truman was sure they could work them again. Meanwhile the Anami government, convinced that they had witnessed an actual miracle, thanked the God’s for their divine providence. The Japanese troops on Kyushu merely thanked them for the reprieve, before they continued to dig, and prepare for their enemies own, manmade, Typhoon.

It was in the wake of the destruction wrought by Typhoon Louise on Okinawa that the decision to deploy the fourth Atomic Bomb was made. The destruction hundreds of planes, ships, and not to mention American lives, had threatened a serious delay to the initiation of the invasion of Kyushu despite the best efforts of American engineers. The news of the storm in America had served a blow to the already fragile morale of the American people, still partly reeling from the news that they were still at war at all. For the Truman administration, this was not the time to appear to be doing nothing as increased calls for more atomic bombings regularly appeared in letters, demonstrations and editorials. Gallup Polls showed that over 80% of Americans wanted more bombings instead of the perceived inaction that was now American policy, the surgical destruction of the Japanese transport system and the rigorous blockade were effective, but they did not gain headlines in the same way that the towering Mushroom Cloud over a burning enemy city could. At the same time Truman was aware that the Japanese were exploiting this modern day Divine Wind to move further forces and supplies into Kyushu for when the American forces did eventually arrive, it was his aim to take this Japanese opportunity, and turn it into an American victory.

On May the 11th, 1945, aware that they would soon have a test ready bomb, the ‘Target Committee’, made up of Manhattan Project scientists and military men, agreed on a list of five Japanese cities which ranked highest in both suitability and strategic importance. Of these five, there were now only two remaining targets, two of whom having been hit, and the other, Kyoto, having been replaced with the port of Nagasaki due to the perceived religious importance of the ‘City of Shrines’. Those targets that remained were Yokohama, in the Kanto Plain, and Niigata, in North West Honshu. At the time of selection Yokohama had been a relatively untouched industrial hub who had seen an increased influx of additional industries as the damage to nearby Tokyo had forced the dispersal of much industry from the capital as possible. It seemed to be the perfect target, especially as the blast would have been in full view of Tokyo, only twenty miles away.

However on the 29th of May over 2500 tons of incendiaries had been dropped on the sea port, flattening nine square miles of the city in a single raid. The damage was so intense that one bombing expert had claimed that “The parts left over were not worth bombs”. Now in October it seemed just as silly to squander mankind’s most powerful weapon on moving rubble around. Whilst Niigata had been growing in importance for the Japanese as the other ports in the region had become increasingly damaged, the collapse of their land empire, and the continued massacre of their merchant fleet, had subsequently rendered the port of dubious value as a target. For strategic purposes, the only current targets of value were in South-West Honshu, and Northern Kyushu of which there were three that had been considered by the targeting committee; Shimonoseki, a port in such close proximity to Kokura that it was presumed to have suffered damage from the attack, Fukuoka, the largest city on the island but one that had already been heavily attacked and was of little strategic value as forces moving towards Kyushu increasingly used the Suo-Nada Sea. This left Yamaguchi, a city of under 100,000 people, a transit hub that Japanese forces would use to move towards the ports in southern Honshu, so far untouched by the war, not a perfect target, but a target nonetheless.

Whilst the Japanese had informed the Americans that they were moving Allied Prisoners of War into their cities, they had been wary of informing them as to which cities they were being moved to. The 15,000 prisoners the Japanese had on the Home Islands could not be spread out in significant numbers everywhere, and it was feared that if the Americans knew where they were then they would simply target the areas where they weren’t. Thus the Americans had remained largely in the dark as to where their human shields were, aside from piecemeal observations and guess work. This would not be enough to save the one hundred Americans, Britons and Dutch in Yamaguchi. Before their lives had been a miserable hell of work in the Zinc Plants and Mines around Fukuoka, and the fatigued, restless, sleep in between. Always in painful hunger as their skeletal bodies attempt to survive on the watery vegetable soup and the balls of rice that their captors would sometimes grant them, they now sat in cold, damp squalor in the centre of the city, as the B-29 Silverplate nicknamed ‘Spook’ arrived over the city. Too delirious to understand why their guards reacted in horror at a single bomber, too weak to attempt to run for cover with them even if they had understood.

They and their captors died with the knowledge that there was nowhere to run.

X-Day

By a miracle of engineering prowess and tenacity, the destruction Typhoon Louise had inflicted upon Okinawa had largely been fixed by early November. Truman had been wary of launching the invasion of Kyushu December, both due to the demoralising effect that heavy American casualties over the Christmas season would likely have on the American public and troops, but more importantly, the delays in which it would spell for Operation Coronet, the invasion of Tokyo itself.

However the Operation, now officially titled Majestic after fears that the Japanese had caught on to the meaning of Olympic, was now scheduled to go ahead on November the 16th, a delay but not necessarily one that would prevent the Americans from completing their objectives in January, and landing on Honshu before the bad weather bogged down their ability to advance.

On November 12th, the American 40th and 158th divisions landed on the Ōsumi and Gotō Islands around the South and West of Kyushu respectively. Their task was to secure the islands, but mainly quell any harassment the Japanese might have on the islands for the invasion armada. However they encountered little resistance on the islands the Japanese had largely written off. Everything they had left was centred on Kyushu. It was for this reason that Fat Men #4, #5, and #6 now flew in the three packs B-29’s now approaching Kyushu

The decision to use Atomic Bombs as part of the invasion, and where to use them was a complex process for Truman, burdened with fears of irradiating American troops and revealing where exactly they planned to land. However the additional troops the Japanese had moved into the island during the American delay had made it clear that something had to be done with the three Atomic Bombs now ready for use at Tinian. Whilst the beaches themselves would not be attacked, the Japanese reserves several miles away, waiting to drive the invaders back into the sea, would not be so lucky.

The bombs would fall on Ijuin, where much of the Japanese 40th Army was gathered, and Kumamoto and Miyakonojo, were the Japanese 216th and 25th were respectively based. It was hoped that along with the loss of men and material, the destruction of critical rail links that the bombings would cause would hinder any Japanese hopes for quick movement of their remaining reserves across the island, whilst all three targets were satisfyingly distant from American beach heads that any radiation would have dissipated by the time American troops had moved into the affected areas, even taking into account the warnings of the scientists studying the effects of the Trinity Test that radiation would dwell for longer than previously expected.

From what intelligence could be gathered, it had become clear that the Japanese were becoming aware that a single B-29 might not be as harmless as it seemed, it was suggested that several other B-29’s from Tinian overfly targets in northern and southern Kyushu, feigning attacks to confuse the Japanese defenders and to prevent them from making any form of effective response. However from 30,000 feet no Japanese aircraft or flak could threaten the bomber, and the suggestion was discarded by General Curtiss LeMay, who didn’t want to waste valuable aircraft just days before they would be necessary in destroying real targets as they aided ‘Majestic’

Thus, on the day that the three atomically armed B-29’s soared towards their destinations, they flew alone. No American escort fighter had their operational ceiling, but this did not matter, as neither did any Japanese aircraft that could potentially threaten the bombers.

Barring one.

Ijuin and Miyakonojo were wiped out of existence almost simultaneously, the reports of a single bomber flying overhead caused the local commanders to act quickly, ordering their men to run to the caves and as deep underground as possible, but with barely twenty minutes warning there was little that could be done for the panicked majority, to say nothing of the material and ammunition that they had so carefully hoarded. The departing B-29’s had killed over 50,000 people, removing the majority of two Japanese divisions from the ‘Decisive Battle’ before they could fire a single shot.

From Kumamoto local commanders looked on with increasing dread, the harsh bright lights followed by dark, blossoming mushroom clouds, had both been seen from their south and their southwest. The flight path of a third B-29 indicated that soon they would gain a first hand experience of their enemies deadliest weapon. Their slightly advanced warning seemingly mattered little, as personal testimonies related, they could only watch the silver dot moving ever closer towards the city.

In the area between the clouds and the stars, a single, camouflaged, orb bobbled. The Mitsubishi J8M Shūsui was not actually a Japanese design, but a direct replica of the Messerschmitt Me 163 ‘Komet’. The Luftwaffe’s most advanced fighter had come far too late, and in far too few numbers to be able to save Germany from collapse in the final months of the war, but the now the final Wunderwaffen that its engineers hoped might save Japan. Tiny and tailless, the craft lacked the range of the B-29 but was by far the fastest fighter aircraft in existence at that time. More importantly, it was the only aircraft that could descend upon America’s ‘untouchable’ bomber from above.

Tetsuzō Iwamoto, Japan’s most skilled pilot, was still wary that the foreign craft could easily kill him just prior to his final take-off. The German rocket-plane had killed so many other test pilots. His craft was not designed to be a Kamikaze, but the Japanese had quickly deduced that thevolatile fuel mix that propelled the rocket-lane would be more than enough to destroy a B-29. Though he was likely running out of oxygen, Iwamoto forced his plane into a violent vertical drop, right on top of his prey.

As they hear of the other successful bombings, the crew of ‘Jabbet’ would have been making the final preparations for their own bomb run. Kumamoto was only moments ahead, and though the skies were clear for their final approach, there would have been little time to react as it sped towards the bomber at close to the speed of sound.

The miniature fireball decapitated the bomber, killing all of the crew almost instantly as they were dragged burning into the sky. The remainder of the craft went twirling backwards, then forwards, then it both directions at once, as it was torn into three parts, before descending along with her crew, and their cargo. As the burning wreckage fell to the ground, the people of the Kumamoto burst out in spontaneous celebration, they do not know how it has happened, but they have been saved, saved from the destruction that has now befallen six Japanese cities. The relief was brutally cut short when the impact charges wired into the Fat Man device detonated the bomb kinetically.

The news, or lack thereof, coming from Jabbet was truly disturbing, both for those in Washington and on Tinian. Kumamoto had burned, although the crew had clearly missed the aiming point, yet the Silverplate had failed to land. It was clear had something had gone badly wrong, but what? No known Japanese aircraft or anti-aircraft device could have reached the B-29’s operational ceiling, though American planes would now thoroughly search the island from the air to try and identify any such weapon.

A malfunction in the plane itself seemed to be the most plausible alternative, that it had either exploded in mid-air, or crash landed, a regrettable if not unprecedented loss under normal circumstances, but the nature of the payload, and the fact that it had gone off on the ground was what would keep both Harry Truman and Curtis Le May awake in the days preceding the Atomic attacks of X-4.

The day of the invasion would be marked ‘X-Day’, with the acknowledgment that ‘D-Day’ would always be held in the Allied conscious as the beginning of the liberation of western Europe. If Operation Overlord had been the decisive victory that had ensured Germany’s downfall, Operation Majestic would mark the X that would forever cross out Japan’s imperial ambitions. Along with the four Atomic attacks against Kyushu, there had been an endless barrage against Kyushu’s southern coast, with the intent of destroying coastal defences, airfields, submarine pens and embarkation points for suicide boats. It was hoped that this bombardment, equivalent to a conventional Atomic attack, would clear the way for an American advance, and remove the thousands of kamikaze aircraft that the Japanese had been carefully hoarding. However, like in Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Japanese had proven that they could once again negate the power of the American and Commonwealth navies with months of relentless digging in and camouflaging, with the caves and mountains that made up large portions of the island only making this easier.

The six divisions the Japanese had spread around the southern coast continued to dig, and to wait. They were the best that Japan had left, armed and ready to face the American infantry and marines that would come crashing down onto the shores. There were only certain places the Americans could feasibly land, and the Japanese had correctly predicted all of them, a fact confirmed by the focused bombardments of Allied ships and planes. It was clear that soon they would come, ‘Ketsu-Go’ or Operation ‘Decisive’, a name that gave no illusions to the importance the Anami regime put upon the success of the defence of Japan’s southernmost island.

Despite the American atomic and conventional attacks, there remained over 6000 kamikaze planes and several hundred boats. These would ignore the otherwise attractive targets of Battleships, Destroyers and Aircraft Carriers, and fly directly for the troop transports carrying the estimated sixteen divisions that the Americans would initially land. Based on the 15% success rate that the Kamikazes had had during the battle for Okinawa, it was hoped that this would destroy most, if not all, of the landing craft, with the defences of the beaches being left to mop up the remainder. If the Kamikazes failed then they would be forced to face a numerically superior enemy, but one that would be badly exposed to line after line of dug in Japanese defences, and could hopefully be held until reserve forces could counter-attack, throwing them back into the sea. The destruction of many of said reserves in the attacks against Ijuin, Kumamoto, and Miyakonojo. The intensity of the American conventional bombing greatly restrained their ability to transport further reinforcements in enough time, did not make this a particularly optimistic battle plan in the early hours of November 16th, as the night sky was lit with hundreds of flashes, exposing the American fleet.

The scale of the armada was certainly worthy of the ‘Majestic’ designation, 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts sailed in support of over a thousand troop ships carrying fourteen divisions of the US Sixth Army, preparing to land at 36 different beaches around the areas of Miyazaki, Ariake, and Kushikino, where the Japanese would be waiting for them.

Sake was drunk, final prayers were said, and reports flew north to Nagano. The Decisive Battle was about to begin. As the minutes passed the flotilla grew closer, accompanied by the low rumble of explosions across the island as final bombardments were made, a noise loud enough in itself, but now drowned out by the dozens, and then hundreds of petite Japanese aircraft filling the night sky.

As the Japanese soldiers cheered their comrades as they flew by, the GI’s and Marines huddled together in their tiny crafts could only watch helplessly, as a swarm descended from above.

At the earlier stage of the Kamikaze tactics, during the Philippines Campaign, the Kamikaze unit consisted only of selected pilots who had completed the official flight training. These pilots could be selected democratically, and had to go through a rigorous criteria to be selected, only one-tenth of the applicants were accepted in this form recruitment. However by early 1945 Japan no longer had the time to be selective with the candidates that they chose for the dubious honour, as they went about the process of gathering as many planes and pilots on Kyushu as possible. By the beginning of August 1945 even those who were still in the middle of training as Kamikaze candidates were being appointed, some with only a couple of days training. Some did not know exactly how to fly an airplane

To the distant observer Kamikaze attack may sound relatively easy, a suicidal dive at an enemy certainly requires determination but what could be simpler when the self-preservation instinct is removed? However Kamikaze pilots required serious training, needing to be capable of steering the airplanes under extreme gravity whilst having to avoid generous amounts of American anti-aircraft fire.

The Japanese had estimated that they would need 5000 Kamikaze’s to defeat the American invasion, on paper they now had over half that number ready to fly against the enemy armada. Some warned that this would not make up for an absence in skilled pilots, that without proper training the success ratios diverged too rapidly, but their complaints fell on deaf ears. Quantity would have to have a quality all of its own.

At close to 6 AM, as the first American spearheads neared their targeted beach heads, the Kamikaze began to drop from the night sky, hundreds of suicidal dives, in the hopes of taking the American troop carriers with them. They went forward against what was nicknamed the Big Blue Blanket, an arrangement of hundreds of American fighter craft from carriers and from land bases, ready to intercept them before their dive, aided by the mobile radar of net cast by dozens of B-17’s, the environment provided a bountiful mass of targets for the experienced American pilots, targets that had no way to defending themselves.

There were many who got through, diving as their brothers burned in the night sky, vertical drops that no American pilot could hope to match lest he also sacrifice his life. The troops in the carriers witnessing the explosions thousands of feet in the air, now found the show come to life in front of them, as the small craft rained down like hellfire, engulfing the craft around them in fireballs, or crashing directly into the sky into a whoosh of spray.

For the veteran troops preparing to land on the Shibushi-Kashiwabaru beaches, it was a horrifying sight watching helplessly as they saw their comrades burst into flame and being forced to wonder if they would be next. They would thank their respective deities as they felt the sea recede below them, until the machine guns and artillery of the Japanese opened up on them anew from the hills, and renewing the nightmare. On the beaches in the vicinity of Yamazaki and Matsusaki in the north, and for the Marines landing at the Kaminokawa-Kushikino beaches to the west, the same story would ring out, nightmarish anticipation of death from the skies before being greeted with even more determined firepower.

The Japanese had hoped to destroy over half of the American invasion with the Kamikaze attacks, but despite the vast casualties on both sides they had failed to annihilate the American first wave as it stormed ashore onto southern Kyushu, with two for every ten craft now wreckage and bodies floating out to sea, turning the water a deep red as they spread out.

In less than an hour, the Decisive Battle had already claimed over fifteen thousand lives.

In the run-up towards Operation Majestic, a debate had raged over the number of casualties American troops may endure in achieving the stated objective, namely the capture of the islands southern third to enable air cover for the invasion of the Kanto Plain. Though these varied rapidly, the estimate of Douglas Mac Arthur, in overall command of the campaign, was relatively optimistic, 51,000 American casualties in the first month of fighting, with a further 54,000 in the next two months it was expected to take to reach the objective. Those these were criticised as being ridiculously conservative, to the point of being naïve, Mac Arthur defended his analysts, claiming that they had based their figures on the highest American casualty scenarios from both the European and Pacific campaigns, namely the invasions of Normandy and Okinawa.

However, Majestic differed from Operation Overlord in more ways than scale. Prior to Normandy the Allied had successfully blinded the German enemy to their preparations, making them believe instead that a landing in Pas De Calais was their primary goal. This had worked so well that even after the landings in Normandy took place, Hitler had refused to move vital reserves, wary that the Allied landings might be a feint before the real invasion took place. On Kyushu, this was not the case, despite feigning attacks against Formosa, Korea, Shikoku, or even the Kanto Plain, the Japanese were not fooled, the Americans would not continue to waste lives on secondary operations when they already had Japan effectively surrounded, and neither would they dare invade Tokyo without the land based air cover on which all their previous major operations had relied. If a major attack was coming, it had to be Kyushu.

It was also clear that the Americans would want major air and naval bases in southern Kyushu, especially in view of a subsequent operation against the Kanto Plain. Southern Kyushu was particularly vulnerable to an attack from Okinawa, and the installations would provide an excellent basis to prepare for such an attack. The layout of the south left few places the Americans could land, and as such the Japanese had based their defences accordingly. Unlike Normandy, there would be no dithering as to where the Allies were coming, and furthermore, the Japanese had amassed a fleet of aircraft largely untouched by American bombing, one which, unlike the Luftwaffe, did not care about casualties.

Okinawa had seemed like a more accurate basis for comparison, with Kamikazes and mountainous fighting that could be expected on Kyushu but it was also an optimistic analysis. On Okinawa the initial landing force had outnumbered the defenders by almost three-to-one overall, on Kyushu it was less than two-to-one. On Okinawa the American and Commonwealth navies could bombard every point in the island, on Kyushu they could only hope to go so far inland, before they would have to rely on land based artillery and mortars. On Okinawa there had been hundreds of Kamikazes attacking in seven large raids, on Kyushu there were thousands, and they attacked unremittingly, against the 9 divisions that made up the first wave, against the 5 divisions that made up the second, and against the convoys that attempted to supply the beaches directly, accompanying the screech of hundreds of carefully hoarded Igo-1-B guided bombs that cratered the embarkation areas of the supply ships.

The Japanese had carefully constructed their positions to be beyond the effective range of enemy naval bombardment, usually based in caves or on inaccessible high ground were they would not be vulnerable to flame throwing tanks against flame throwing tanks. From these vantage points they were able to submit the US forces on the beaches, who by the second and third days found themselves bogged down by a constant volley of artillery and mortar fire. Over those painful days the advance was sluggish, or completely static, reliant on superior firepower and horrific casualties. It would be at this moment that the Japanese reserves would smash the American beach heads, and wait for their leaders to acquiesce to more honourable terms. Unfortunately the core of these reserves, and their railway lines, had been destroyed by the two Atomic attacks, coupled with the vast conventional raids over the area. Those left had been scattered in the event of another Atomic attack, and would take several days to regroup and be transported, days that would take their toll, as the American beach heads hardened, and began to advance and achieve their initial objectives.

For the Anami government, who based all of their confidence on the ‘Decisive Battle’ strategy, this was a serious blow to morale. The Americans had been allowed to establish themselves, and the time for a counter-attack had now passed. Now Japan’s hopes rested on a very different strategy, one that had been feared but also logically considered. If the Americans could not be forced off the island then they could be bled off. In the first two weeks alone, 30,000 Americans were estimated to have been killed, and thousands more wounded, pictures confirmed the tales of the great piles of bodies and lines of stretchers waiting to be taken off the island. If such a casualty rate could be maintained, then the Americans would be forced to halt their advance until reinforcements could arrive in significant enough numbers, time for the Japanese themselves to bring more forces onto the island, more Kamikaze’s, and perhaps even a Bomb of their own. An onslaught large enough to finally drive the Americans off the island and bring them towards the negotiating table.

Time, the factor that had been against Japan from the very beginning, would now have to be their saviour.

By December 16th, 1945, Operation Majestic had been underway for almost a month, the bloodiest month in American history. As the infantry and marines had scrambled onto the beaches, the relentless Kamikaze and artillery attacks had killed or wounded enough men to make up almost 5 divisions of the original 14 that had landed. For the Japanese, who had expected over 7 whole divisions to be destroyed, these American losses were insufficient to eject the Americans from their beach heads, thanks especially to the destruction of much of their carefully hoarded reserves of men and material by two American atomic bombs on November 12th. However all was not lost, as news of mass protests against the war in America encouraged a rethinking in strategy, to cause as many American casualties as possible until support for the war collapsed amongst the American public. As they struggled to advance, the American troops found themselves facing line after line of entrenched Japanese who had forgone attempts to throw them off the island in favour of a rabid defence, one that was made disturbingly easy by the mountainous, cave ridden terrain of the island.

By mid-December, the planned link-up of the three fronts of the Majestic landing had still not made joined hands at Kagoshima Bay, the well dug-in Japanese defenders had ensured only a crawling advance though the mountain’s with a worryingly high American casualty rate. This was only exacerbated by a general shortage of supplies, the Americans had not yet captured a major port and Japan’s remaining were increasingly directing their attacks against on American supply dumps. Many ships found themselves leaving with vast numbers of dead and injured

To MacArthur’s frustration, he found himself having to reinforce the initial invasion force with forces earmarked for Operation [i]Coronet[/i], the invasion of the Kanto Plain. These were troops he knew he would have to replace with GI’s from the European theatre, most of whom had no experience fighting the Japanese. On the frontline, lacking sleep and subsisting on irregular meals, more and more American troops found themselves having to deal with the onset of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other Mental Disturbances after weeks of uninterrupted combat. With no combat psychiatrists assigned to the operation, sufferers often only had each other to confide in. From Radio Tokyo, the voices in accented English pounded in relentless monotony throughout the ominous nights, “Every fifteen seconds an American soldier dies. Kyushu: The mass grave!”, many found it hard to disagree.

If the Americans could take consolation from anything, it was that their enemies to the north had it far worse. Whilst on paper the six Japanese divisions who had made up the first line of defence against the American offensive remained, they were ghosts of their former selves, having taken terminal casualties as they sacrificed increasing numbers of men in holding back the American advance, they were now reliant on reinforcements and supplies from the large number of Japanese troops in the north. The situation of Kyushu’s road net in August 1945 was incredibly Spartan, with only one two lane gravel road built along the coast, a road that had been damaged by the stress put upon it byt the constant movement of tanks and heavy trucks as the preparations for [i]Ketsu-Go[/i] The atomic attacks against Ijuin and Miyakonojo had further limited its usefulness, leaving it split into six different parts that had to be replaced by more primitive dirt roads which often became useless during heavy rain. The inland prefectural roads were, for the most part, one and a half lanes wide interspersed with frequent "passing" locations and suitable for light transport only, which often became a threat in itself as American planes ruthlessly targeted anything deemed to be of military importance, which bereft of targets had been expanded to include civilian cars and horse drawn carts. American bombing had rendered the rail network, overly reliant on weak bridges and tunnels, practically useless. Thus supply had been forced down to a trickle as the Japanese troops went hungry and cold in holding the line against the Americans, often going days without food or sleep and forced into wariness of the constant potential for death that could come from the sky at any moment.

In charge of this vast and chaotic network of dirt roads and small bands of troops and supplies was Lieutenant General Isamu Yokoyama, an experienced quartermaster who had helped facilitate the great victory that had been the Ichi-Go offensive in China. Despite the fact that large amounts of the countryside had been in the hands of the Chinese communists Yokoyama had continued to supply his troops to the great frustration of the Americans. At the time it had been America’s Chinese alliances who were suffering the consequences of his talent, now he had been directed against their own troops. The presumption that he was residing in the city would be the pivotal factor in determining Fukuoka as the target of the latest Atomic Bomb.

Truman knew that Japanese resistance had to be broken fast, should public opinion in the US take a turn even further for the worse.

Several senior officers had been secretly calling for him to allow the deployment of the thousands of American mustard gas bombs and artillery shells that had been produced during the war, on the basis that gas would effectively penetrate cave and tunnel defences were artillery and flamethrowers often failed. The tendency of Mustard Gas to linger for several days also made it an attractive weapon to be used against Japanese logistics in the north where it might continuously disrupt Japanese forces for long enough for American forces to decisively defeat those who lingering at the frontlines. However Truman had serious moral qualms about using Poison Gas, having experienced its horrors on the Western Front in the First World War, he also didn’t want America to be seen as the side to use gas first on the international stage, especially when the Japanese capacity to retaliate, and with what, was unknown.

Thus America’s other extraordinary weapon would be used instead, targeted at the supposed location of Yokoyama’s headquarters in Fukuoka, the largest city on Kyushu, whose population had been swelled by the vast columns of refugees fleeing the fighting in the south, most of whom were staying in little more than makeshift tents. A large column of B-29’s headed towards the target, wary of sending out any further Silverplate's unescorted since the tragedy of the Jabbet they flew directly over Yokoyama as he planned below the ground, in the town of Chikushino. It would only be after the war that the OSS would admit that their intelligence had incorrectly identified the headquarters of the Japanese 57th division as that of the entire Sixteenth Army.

As the target drew nearer the flock of bombers began to pull away to a remaining three as the Enola Gay dropped her payload on 350,000 people who had just realised to their horror that this was no conventional raid. Tents, buildings, and inhabitants were set alight universally, over two hundred thousand staggering in agony, amongst them the remnants of the Fukuoka Prisoner of War Camp, those whom the Japanese had hoped might protect their cities from the flames. The blast tore the city apart, toppling buildings down on those in the outskirts who had fled, blinded and in searing pain, in an attempt to reach shelter.

In Chikushino, a roar formed from outside Isamu Yokoyama’s subterranean headquarters, before the underground chamber to shake violently. After a few moments of cursing and ducking, the men present stepped outside to gaze at the ominous black mushroom that arose to their west, before returning to their business.

As American troops began to slowly trickle into the lowlands of southern Kyushu, they were about to come into contact with what they had unleashed.

The troops had been told not to expect a Christmas truce. Though the battle for southern Kyushu, a war of relentless artillery, static advance, and mass slaughter for both sides had come to resemble the battlefields of northern France in 1914, neither side would choose to emerge to sing and pray and curse those who had sent them to this living hell to die for their own glory. The Japanese did not officially observe Christmas, her tiny Christian population had been hidden and repressed, largely concentrated in the prefecture of Fukuoka, many who had survived the initial blast of the Atomic bomb would not live to see the day, as their radiations and the radiation that had poisoned their bodies took its tool. Not Christian martyrs, but martyrs of Japan, announced radio Tokyo, a testament to the murderous tendencies of the Americans, and why the fight that raged in the south was so crucial to preserving the future of Japan.

On December 25th, 1945, there was one area of the frontline were the guns had gone silent. To the American soldiers to who had begun to slowly creep through the ruins of Miyakonojo the lack of artillery and mortar fire, planes flying overhead, or the screams of the Japanese or their own comrades should have been welcome. They had often dreamed of the time when they would be free of this misery, to bask in the promised peace that had been so cruelly snatched away on August 15th, to replace birdsong, laughter, the simple hum drum of life over the brutal rhythms that had so frequently accompanied this most nightmarish of wars. In the ruined city there hopes were squandered.

The fires had burned for days, days in which Operation Majestic had begun. In order to address this foremost concern, the city had been left to burn out, with all medical staff departing to assist the already building casualties on the front, the surviving population had been left to its own devices. Some had tried to escape, most north, some south, where they hoped there might be better access to food and water. As the Americans approached the city their bodies began to appear, alone and betrayed, growing all the more frequent as they approached the ruins. For those who had remained in the city there was nothing left, either to eat or to warm themselves with as their wounds and the lethal radiation too their toll as the weeks went by. Japanese soldiers passing through noted the infamous ‘Atomic sickness’ and stayed clear of the city, choosing not even to defend the city, unsure as to whether their troops would also be poisoned, instead they had taken positions in the hills around the ruins and left those remaining to die, lest their ailment was found to be contagious. Now the only life in the city was the howling of the winds, and the rags that billowed in their wake.

The American troops would not allow complacency to get the better of them, behind any standing wall there might be a lone Japanese soldier creeping closer with his bayonet, readying to take an American with him before finally succumbing to the radiation. With the cover of a pile of rubble, perhaps two Japanese were busily inserting one last mortar cartridge, pausing only to cough up blood and wipe it from their burned faces. At any time one of the growing number of corpses might spring to life to pull the pin on their carefully concealed grenade that would everyone around him. The corpses, ever more numerous, disagreed. Soldiers, policemen, nurses, men, women, children only lay in pale decay, their detaching jaws contorting their faces into a mocking laugh as the American procession continued to move through.

Amidst the dust and rubble a number of tents had been hastily assembled by the survivors, seeking some shelter from the misery of the rain and the wind. Most had now tumbled over, or been blown apart all together, unattended by their occupants, dead for weeks, barring one. A G.I had noticed by the moonlight that inside one of the tents sat figures, armaments were raised, shouts in Japanese were called to come out and surrender, a phrase that many had learned but had seen frighteningly little use. Still the figures remained silent, motionless, as one man began to approach, covered by the others, he carefully stepping over the carcasses of livestock that may once have belonged to the tents occupants. It was clear to him that they were dead, they must have been, but still the hope remained that something, anything, might yet be alive in this city of the dead.

As he pulled open the canvas the dreaded smell was overpowering. The figures were upright, they had died kneeling, their heads lowered, as their decay had caused them to slump into each other, locked in a comforting embrace. A man and a woman, both young, one recently pregnant, staring down at the small bed of straw and wood they had assembled for the life that they had created. A life that laid in his manger, full of the hope and potential that had made up his few days on his Earth, now silenced forever.

Ache: The American and Japanese Home Fronts

The war had in many ways been good for America. In the wake of the various schemes of the New Deal era, none of which had quite proven to be a solution to the collapse of the American economy in the late Nineteen Twenties, the war had given the incentive the Roosevelt administration had finally needed to inject vast amounts of income into the American economy. At a stroke the war solved the critical problem of idleness, with unemployment at practically zero by 1943. Whilst the other worlds great powers worked to destroy the economies of the enemy, American industry was left intact, too far away to be threatened by meaningful Axis attacks, the American people finally had money to spend and jobs with which they would produce the goods of the new consumer society alongside the tools needed to combat global Fascism.

By the end of 1945, American Gross National Product had amassed to 355 Billion Dollars, making half of the global economies overall GNP, favourable trade deals were secure in Latin America, and were being secured in Western Europe and the Middle East as countries began to recognise the growing American hegemony and the need for Dollars to rebuild their own shattered infrastructures. Coupled with the world’s largest Navy, the best equipped army, the most advanced air force and monopoly of the Atomic Bomb, a prosperous peace seemed not only possible, but secured.

Nevertheless, the peace had not yet come. On August 14th, as Japanese surrender had been declared, it had all seemed to close, only to be cruelly snatched away by events in the Pacific War. Rejoice had turned to anger, drunken rioting broke out from the previous partying, individuals of East Asian appearance were assaulted and sometimes murdered, as if they were personally responsible for the Anami government. Unable to stage mass prosecutions, the vast majority of those involved would never face trial, a fact that would burn in the minds of East-Asian-Americans for decades to come.

Vengeance against the Japanese double cross had been demanded, and it had been provided. Truman was applauded for his decisiveness in ordering the destruction of Kokura, the Mushroom Cloud towering over the city, was agreed to be a suitable response to the Japanese perfidy, many looked forward to the use of the next bomb,. With the government choosing to deliberately leave its people in the dark about the nature of Plutonium production, should the Japanese gain any insights themselves, many became impatient as to when the fourth bomb would be used, no response was given. Throughout September the American public read of the major British operations in South East Asia, and the daring Soviet invasion of Hokkaido, welcoming the critical defeats to Japan, but falling into a malaise at their own apparent inaction. If the Soviets had captured Japan’s northernmost island so easily, why couldn’t their own troops pull off the same fate? The reply that Japanese forces were concentrated in the south was a conclusive answer, however was one that fostered greater doubts in the minds of many Americans. If an invasion went ahead, would they be sending their boys into a meat grinder?

The doubt lingered, as well as demands for something to be done other than an invasion, namely the destruction of Yamaguchi on October 15th. The public welcomed a fourth bombing, and overwhelmingly supported further atomic attacks, though reactions to the bomb were beginning to alter, it was no longer the war ending weapon that many had hoped that it would be, nor the weapon of righteous anger that it had been in the wake of the aborted Japanese surrender, it was simply yet another horrific weapon that the Japanese, and the war itself, could apparently withstand. Nonetheless it was hoped that if the bombs could be used continuously, rolled straight off the production line and on to Japan, the enemy would eventually break without a need for invasion. Impatience and dismay rose as the weeks went by without another atomic attack, or any large scale fire bombings for that matter, as the USAAF turned their attention towards strategic targets on Honshu and tactical targets on Kyushu, invasion seemed unnecessary yet Truman was pursuing it anyway, why? Did he simply want the glorious victory that a protracted campaign would not grant him? Was he more concerned about Japanese civilians than American boys?

The delays caused by Typhoon Louise, an event itself which had been kept quiet, had left many hoping that an invasion was not going to be pursued after all. American troops continued to be transferred from Europe to the Pacific, but perhaps this was only in preparation for an occupation after Japanese surrender? It had been rumoured that another Atomic Bomb had not been sued against the Japanese because they were being stockpiled for one large knockout raid against several targets, and there was an element of truth to this, three bombs were going to be dropped on Japan simultaneously but it would not relieve those worried wives, parents, girlfriends, and family of the troops now making the final preparations before they stormed the beaches of Kyushu.

Wartime censorship had been relaxed in some ways as the war appeared to wind down but if signs that any reporter knew that a third B-29 had left Tinian but had not come back appeared, the individuals in question quickly found themselves being reminded of their patriotic duty to not worsen the already declining morale of the American public and if they forgot they could expect to be charged for their seditious activities. They needn’t have bothered, the atomic attacks quickly slipped out of popular memory as Operation Majestic began in earnest.

It was mid-Afternoon when news of the landings came, some cried, others cursed Truman and the military for sending American troops into an unnecessary quagmire however the majority of the American public acted much as they had when they first heard news of the invasion of Normandy, with a fervent determination to be calm about the whole situation, the initial reaction commonly being, "Well it's here at last." More news arrived in the following days, reporting the Japanese had massed their Kamikaze planes and boats as feared and that this had led to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers before they had even hit the beaches, the advance had been complicated by the terrain, Kamikaze harassment of supply, and the well dug in Japanese defenders who had proved hard to remove. Casualties continued to mount, the censors had to caution the papers that tried to show the mass of body bags and stretchers being loaded onto transport ships but it did not matter, as the days went by more American flags were presented to grieving families, the streets seemed filled with people wearing black, by early December a stranger bursting into tears on the bus was hardly given a second glance. The impression of an advance that was more or a crawl than a charge did not help morale. Older men compared the situation their experiences in the First World War, many began to wonder why Truman had chosen to throw America back in time when they had the weapon of the future at their disposal.

On December 7th, 1945, four years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, mass vigils were held across the country, for the hundreds thousands of families who had lost sons, husbands and fathers, and for vast number who still had theirs in the field. Among the grieving and prayers, the discontent at the current situation was prevalent, it was noted more than once that ten times as many Americans had died in the invasion of Kyushu than had died during the Japanese attack that had motivated such anger four years ago, some commented in response that Truman’s actions had done more damage than Tojo’s. The majority present agreed with the policy of unconditional surrender their opposition not to the war itself, but the current policy of invasion. Surely the Japanese would break eventually if the blockade and atomic bombings were stepped up? Though able to see the glint of their candles outside, Truman was not concerned about these people, it was easy to be critical of military policy from the backseat, but they were fundamentally on side, for the moment.

The minority were what he feared, those who favoured negotiating with the Japanese. If they agreed to leave Asia and demilitarise, not occupying their territory and allowing them to retain their political system seemed like a pretty square deal, especially if it took their sons out of the firing line. Truman had never put much stake in polling though the increasing public attraction towards this minority was beginning to become alarming. In August 1945, those who had favoured negotiating with the Japanese had only made up 10% of the population, now it was almost a quarter. What would happen if that number continued to rise? If the war was lost at home, how long could it continue across the Pacific?

The reports of the anti-war vigils across the Pacific finally reached the Supreme War Council under the mountains of Matsushiro almost a week after the event. The hastily prepared translation of the AB Radiotjänst reporting of events had rather melodramatically exaggerated certain aspects of the Swedish account, such as when it had described the participants as “rioters” and the vigils as “anti-war rallies”, whether or not it had been done so deliberately did not matter to the Japanese Prime Minister who finally had some real progress to show to his detractors that the ‘Decisive Battle’ was proving to be successful despite their cowardly objections.

Though under normal circumstances many would have questioned how significant these events really were, it had been the first good news the Supreme War Council had had in quite a while. Their empire on the Asian mainland, the empire they had went to war to protect, collapse in front of their eyes with their dream of a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere soon following in its wake. The Thais, Japan’s supposed allies, had made peace at the first sign of trouble and actively joined the enemy. Other than intern and punish the Thai civilians living and working within Japan, there was little Anami could do to respond as all of Japan’s presence in South East Asia evaporated. Indonesia remained nominally under their control but with the Japanese now wholly in hiding or at the bottom of the Pacific, it mattered little. Japan and her people were slowly beginning to transform.

As the battles for Kyushu had raged on, it had been noticed that one of the more bizarre weapons in the Japanese arsenal had been taken out of commission. ‘Orphan Ann’, sometimes referred to as Tokyo Rose, and her propaganda radio show Zero Hour, had been off the air since late August. In their few moments of respite, many theories were entertained as to what her fate might have been. Some speculated that she had died in the bombing of Kokura theorising that the Radio Tokyo might have moved its operations to the relatively intact city of Kitakyuhsu had had been damaged heavily in the attack on the area, others pointed to the darker and more spiteful tone that Japanese propaganda broadcasts had adopted in the wake of the Anami coup, a few proposed that she had been directly involved in the change of Government and could now no long DJ as she was too busy running the country from the shadows in a role similar to Lady Macbeth.

Regardless of plausibility, all of these theories were to be proven wrong. Iva Ikuko Toguri, as some had suspected due to her knowledge of knowledge of American culture and her accent, was a ‘Nisei’, a Japanese-American born in Los Angeles who had been visiting an ailing relative in Tokyo when the Japanese had struck at Pearl Harbour. Thereafter, like all Americans resident in Japan, she was declared to be an enemy alien and denied a ration card, rejecting the coercive attempts by the Japanese authorities to have her renounce her American citizenship.

For almost two years she had worked at Radio Tokyo as a typist before being discovered by Colonel Charles Cousens, in 1943. An Australian Prisoner of War who had been a popular Sydney Radio Announcer before 1939, Cousens had been captured by the Japanese during the summer of 1942 and had revealed his former career during his interrogation in Tokyo, he had found himself being given the choice between making propaganda broadcasts for Allied troops or execution and had chosen the former out of desperation, working alongside other Press Ganged Allied prisoners in the propaganda show, [i]Zero Hour[/i]. When encouraged by his producers to find an American woman to be their ‘Axis Sally’ similar to those of the Germans and Italians, Cousens chose Toguri. In contrast to the authoritative lecturing of Mildred Gillars, or the seductive taunting of Rita Zucca, Cousens wanted a voice and attitude that sounded like a more realistic American woman and Toguri’s world weariness fit perfectly as ‘Orphan Ann’ (named after the popular musical that Toguri had been fond of as a child) became more popular with Allied troops than any of her other Axis counterparts.

She had never let go of her American identity however, or her patriotism and had helped to smuggle food to Allied Prisoners in Tokyo when possible, an activity that Cousens and many of the other Allied members of Radio Tokyo had also participated in. Though some of the Japanese technicians had known about this, their regard for their forced colleagues and their basic humanitarianism had kept them from alerting the feared Kempetai. Their charity would be their undoing, the dawn of the Anami regime saw several very virulent official condemnations of ‘defeatist’ and ‘seditious’ elements in Japanese society. Due to its role in relaying Japan’s views to the enemy, the Radio Tokyo’s propaganda department had come under intense scrutiny. Out of fear for their own lives many admitted their suspicions and on August 20th, the Toguri was caught in the act of passing food across barbed wire fences late at night and was arrested on the spot. Shortly after [i]Zero Hour[/i] was shot down as the Allied Prisoners were imprisoned en masse for the crime of being enemy agents. Interned along with the starving prisoners she had tried to save, Toguri found herself being separated from her Portugese Husband and was moved along with several hundred other internees to the city of Niigata, where she would help make up one of the many highly visible human shields that were designed to dissuade the Americans from using their Atomic Bombs. With little shelter, or food, she sat frozen and hungry, waiting for the war to end in the knowledge that both sides now despised her.

Her radio work had not all been in vain, in their exiled travels many Japanese communists had become fluent in English, and in helping the Maoist guerrillas develop their own propaganda had listened to the enemy’s in turn. With his own background being in propaganda, Sanzo Nosaka had been happy to entertain the idea of a ‘Sapporo Sae’ to help spread the Japanese revolution but he had not expected such an opportunity to be discovered begging in the refugee camps for Japanese settlers in Manchuria.

Yamaguchi Yoshiko, also known as Li Xianglan, had been one of the most prominent celebrities across the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere thanks to both her singing and acting with her laid back, western-style music and her now and then satirical performances on film. Born as a Japanese settler in Manchuria, and with her role as a ‘Japan-Manchuria Goodwill Ambassadress’ she lacked a fan base in either the Kuomintang or the Chinese Communist Party, both of whom wanted to execute her for treason. Fully aware of this, she had been perhaps the only civilian to flee north as the Soviet Union had torn to pieces the Japanese rule in China that she had helped endorse in the belief that the Red Army would not be so unforgiving. Exchanging make-up with dirt and disguising herself as a peasant, she had successfully moved into Manchuria, where she heard the news that Japan had not in fact surrendered and found herself placed in a camp for Japanese settlers where they were told they would be returned to Japan when the war was over. Life in the camps were brutal as the Chinese guards exacted revenge for fourteen years of Japanese crimes, with their Soviet allies often turning a blind eye. As a beautiful woman she had felt particularly vulnerable and when men and women came recruiting for a better life in the Japanese People’s Emancipation League she had willingly accepted under a false alias to ensure that she would be out of China before a CCP guard noticed her and carried out the death sentence that Mao had put on the heads of all ‘Imperialist Collaborators’.

Wary of accepting new collaborators into their movement, she had been cross-examined when she had arrived on Hokkaido and as her story had fell part under interrogation, she revealed who she truly was. Soon she was in front of Nosaka himself, who gave her two options, she could renounce her Imperialist actions by helping to make propaganda for the JPEL, or she could be handed over to the Chinese Communist Party. Thus as the Soviets bombarded Northern Honshu with Shells, they began to send another weapon over the Tsugaru Strait, Jazz.

Banned on the Home Islands for its western influences during the war, the genre was reborn on Hokkaido as a collection of established Japanese and Soviet artists, some new found prodigies (Toshiko Akiyoshi had begun her career playing in a Soviet commandeered Bar) and by Yoshiko herself as she hosted the ‘The Three O'Clock You’, tempting Japanese troops and civilians to rise up with her news of Japanese feudalism and defeat, her promise of freedom and three meals a day, and her provision of banned but demonically catchy music that many on Honshu found hard not to listen to, especially due to the fact that she would sometimes inform listeners of where the Red Army planned to bomb or shell in her own affectionate manner.

With most only knowing a few words of Japanese, the Red Army troops would often ignore the show as was officially encouraged. They did not need distractions, as they prepared to bring the revolution to Honshu far more directly.

Whilst the Americans only held a sliver of territory on southern Kyushu and the Anami government remained confident they could keep it that way, all of Hokkaido was now under the control of the treacherous Soviets, a defeat humiliating enough in itself for those who considered such territory to be sacred but also one that the ordinary Japanese soon felt the pain of.

Before the war, Japan imported about 20% of her dominant food staple, rice, from Korea, Formosa, and South East Asia. The destruction of Japanese shortage through the American blockade and bombing of ports had reduced this to a trickle, no rice at all being imported from South East Asia after March 1944. The ambitious program of feeding the nation on domestic production alone, which had been laid down in January 1945 had fallen short, with a poor rice harvest only reaching 60% of the quota being met in the quarter January-March and even less by the Fall. Moreover, rice for the Armed Forces had been withdrawn in ever increasing quantities to ensure that the Decisive Battle would not be lost to starvation before the Americans arrived. This had left 40% less rice for civilian consumers than there had been when the war began with an even worse situation for those seeking meat, fish, or vegetables.

As a result of the dwindling inventories of basic foods, the daily ration amounted to fewer than 1,500 calories, about 65% of the minimum Japanese standard for the maintenance of health and work efficiency. This was not a starvation diet, although malnutrition began to grow steadily as people tried to bolster their diet with insects, worms, and soups made out of grass and acorns. When the Soviets had invaded Hokkaido, only 5% of Japan’s large population inhabited the island, with the rest of the area being covered with farmland that had accounted for around 25% of Japans agricultural production. As the Japanese glared at their Soviet enemy from across the Tsugaru Strait, it was evident that no further shipments would be coming from the island, something they were constantly reminded of by the large howitzers the Soviets had placed in the southern tip of Hokkaido.

The rations had had to be further tightened, down to less than 50% of the average requirement as food stocks began to dwindle thanks to the meticulous destruction of the Japanese road and rail networks as well as the loss of Hokkaido. In the cold of winter the ache of hunger was becoming too painful to stand. The Japanese people, relied upon for their acquiescent obedience since the early Twenties, now began to complain and protest as to why the military was fed but they were not. The Japanese secret police, the infamous Kempetai reacted as they had planned for these ‘Red’ activities, with beatings, repression, and torture but as they themselves began to feel the need to tighten their belts to avoid the protests of their stomachs they also began to question whether they could survive to see the victory that the Decisive Battle was proclaimed to soon bring.

This was not a concern for the man drawing up plans in his frost bitten office in Sapporo, for as the hunger in the south grew, he knew all the more what Marx and Hegel before him had spoken of when they talked of the dialectic. He had all the time in the world.

As the Soviets had rolled over the last remnants of organised resistance in Hokkaido, many had fled blindly into the mountains, refusing to surrender to the enemy but also refusing to fight a doomed struggle against overwhelming odds, they had disappeared into the rough terrain of Hokkaido’s various hills, mountains and volcanoes in the hope had liberation would soon come in the form of the Imperial Japanese Navy, misled by the propaganda of the Japanese state which had vaguely assured the young recruits that it remained a mighty force.

Their hopes had been in vain, the Anami government saw the Soviet occupation of Hokkaido as a terrible humiliation but one that little could be done about. The Japanese navy was now little more than a collection of submarines and damaged destroyers, who along with the majority of Japanese forces and ammunition, had been directed towards Kyushu. If the war could be won there, it could only be hoped that in a resulting peace settlement that the United States might agree to force the Soviets off of the island themselves, based upon what the Soviets had begun to do to eastern Europe.

Those left waiting had little ammunition to fight the Soviet occupation of the island, and with food production coming Soviet control, most of their actions had been in securing food for themselves, as the weather grew ever colder. By December the rivers had begun to freeze and heavy snowfall in the north left most of those with little shelter dead, the Soviets took little action to stop these partisans groups, the forces that they could supply there were already stretch in governing the islands population of 3 million. Already thousands of new recruits from the Japanese People’s Emancipation League were bolstering their forces, many of whom were local, and willing to point out were exactly the frozen remnants of Japanese resistance might be hiding. As survival became harder, the limited numbers of radios the resistance had taken with them became their greatest weapon. In October communication with Japanese forces on Honshu had been chaotic, as different wavelengths were attempted to try and reach radio stations in northern Honshu but eventually threadbare contact became established, and the Anami government could finally attain an insight into what was going on in Soviet Japan…

To the frustration of Anami and his peers, the Soviet occupation appeared to be proceeding with an irritating enthusiasm. Food and fuel was not a problem, as the islands vast supplies of timber and rive were put to good use. Indeed, civilians on the island who had dreaded a Soviet occupation based on the horror stories the Japanese media had told them of raping and pillaging Bolsheviks, were pleasantly surprised as they found their rations actively increasing. The Soviets could not export the surplus fuel and food they had acquired in these conditions, and instead put it to good use in adding substance to the proclamations of the Japanese People’s Emancipation League that life was indeed far better without the uncaring government of Tokyo. Acts of rape and murder were thoroughly punished, though as had been the case in the European theatre, frontline Soviet troops were far less likely to commit these atrocities. Robbery was also forbidden, though after years of war there was little to be pillaged from the impoverished population who had been abandoned for the needs of the war effort. Most saw the Soviets as at least amicable as the Kempetai, and though they were rather alien with their odd alphabet and their dialectics, there were many impoverished, disenchanted, Liberals, Socialists, Anarchists, Ainu, and , of course, Communists, who welcomed the revolutionary change Sanzo Nosaka promised to bring.

Nosaka himself was greatly encouraged by the progress he had seen, in the nineteen thirties he had been forced to acknowledge that reformism would be necessary on Japan’s road to Socialism, but that need to slowly seep power to the proletariat without rocking the Imperialist boat had now been rendered rendundant. Now he had been granted the ability to ignore the thesis that had forced him to flee and had seen many of his comrades jailed or even killed. Now it was the turn of the Japanese imperial hierarchy to run and hide and die, beaten at their own game. Now he had the power, and with it he would not repeat the mistakes that they had made, his enemies would not be allowed to live. Nonetheless there was only so much of Japan’s imperial system that he could purge at this given time. His role was currently administrative, and though the Soviets were happy to remove any official deemed unnecessary or harmful to their own progress, powerful or popular local figures were often not only left alone, but encouraged to cooperate. He recognised that such acts of mercy were necessary at the present time, best not to upset the boat too much whilst there remained an alternative Japan to the south. During the Russian Civil War the Soviets themselves had had to make unpalatable alliances temporarily to ensure their own survival, before removing those elements when they were no longer useful, and as the war went on he had begun to realise more and more the large number of comparisons between the last days of Tsarist Russia and the current state of Imperial Japan. Soon military catastrophe and starvation would become too much for a populace sick of seeing their rulers thrive on their misery, they would revolt, and the whole rotten edifice would come crashing down. Then, like Lenin before him, he would emerge from exile to lead the Japanese people towards their destiny.

As the winter began to set in, the drift ice from the Sea of Okhotsk, and the increasingly harsh Siberian tundra, had complicated Soviet supply to their forces in Hokkaido. Alongside the American delays in fulfilling their commitments to the transfer of ships to the Soviets that had enabled them to invade Hokkaido in the first place, this had made on invasion of northern Honshu impossible by the end of 1945, though in the course of the war their sworn enemies had shown that in their age, invasions no longer had to involve crossing a sea.

The Red Army, who had boasted the largest Airborne Forces before the war, could always pursue other options.

The Collapse of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere

Clement Attlee may have seemed to many an unusual choice to lead the British government to the final victory in the Second World War. Emerging from a liberal middle class background, he differed greatly from his predecessor’s glorious Imperial past and though he had gained a reputation as a capable leader, an effective administrator who could hold the various factions of his beloved Labour party together as he dragged his Comrades through the long recovery of their virtual wipe-out in 1931. Unlike Churchill, Attlee preferred substance over speeches, practical applications rather than grand sweeping gestures, a reputation that would cause some to question whether he was a leader of men. “A modest man with much to be modest about” Churchill was reported to have said, although he denied it vigorously.

For behind the plain suit and wise smirk lay a veteran, a man who had been through the cauldron’s of the First World War, fighting on the frontlines in both Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. He had been wounded twice, and had also contracted dysentery, but whilst some would see such hindrances as a way out from the nightmarish conflict, Attlee demanded to be sent back each time, gaining a reputation for volunteering for any dangerous task forced upon his men, and for threatening to shoot other officers who did not show theirs the same regard. When he first ran for Parliament in 1922, there was no doubting the patriotism of “Major Attlee”.

To the surprise of the entire establishment he had swept to victory in the July 1945 General Election. The people had not only voted in reaction to the ‘Guilty Men’ of the Conservative Party and their legacy of economic failure and appeasement, but also in the promises of the new society Attlee had pledged to introduce, a Britain not just free from the threat of Nazism, but also from those of unemployment, poverty, and ill-health. ‘Win the Peace!’ had been Labour’s slogan, filled with the promise of the new age that the British people had went through such tribulations to get to. However, there remained the problem of the War. Though a passionate Socialist, Attlee remained a patriot and he realised the damage that would be done to British prestige if they were seen to be doing nothing whilst the Americans and Soviets defeated Japan for them. They had to be shown to be putting in their own effort, and where better to start than in the region where the British had suffered their most calamitous defeat on all time? On September 9th, thousands of British troops began to land around the areas of Port Dickson and Port Swettenham to avenge the disaster of 1942, the British liberation of Singapore had begun.

Opposing them was the Japanese Seventh Area Army led by General Seishirō Itagaki, a man also driven by the need to right former wrongs. His humiliation at the hands of the Soviets during the border clashes around Inner Mongolia in 1939 had led to his exile to Korea where he sat overseeing an Army of Garrisson troops as the real wars raged to his south and to his west. Moved once again to take command of the occupation forces in Malaya and Singapore, he had watched as the war turned fundamentally against Japan, destroying her fleet and slicing her recently acquired empire in half. Whilst he and his troops were only a few thousand miles from the Home Islands, the American and British fleets ensured that he and his men may as well have been on the Moon. Itagaki was alone, cut-off, and doomed. To the exiled General, these conditions were perfect for his final stand.

Despite a meticulous counter-intelligence program, that Japanese were aware of the British strategy and were in the midst of boosting their defences on Malaya's west coast when the British forces, led by Louis Mountbatten, launched their attack. Though the Japanese forces were numerically superior in theory, they could not match the artillery and air power provided by the British Royal Navy and Air Force. They did however have on trick up their sleeve. Since the “betrayal” of Japan’s German ally in May 1945, the Japanese had interned two German U-Boats, U-181, and U-862. Since then they had been refitted to launch Japanese torpedoes, and were rechristened I-501 and I-502 to represent their new allegiance. Whilst they had been planned for use as transport Submarines, the arrival of the British fleet had prompted them to be thrown into action, dwelling in the surrounding waters as the British secured the ports that they had previously been held in. As British naval presence dissipated they began to strike against the ships bringing the vital supplies needed to push the British advance forward into Singapore. With a mixed German-Japanese crew, they flew both the Swastika Banner and the rising Sun to the confusion of Allied vessels, who made several references to German “Pirates” operating in the area. By late October both had been sunk and the last ghost of the Third Reich had been laid to rest, doomed not by the glorious defeats of the European Theatre, but by a lack of reliable spare parts.

They had done their job however, as the Japanese retreated east to more defensible positions the British struggled to follow, as their enemy made great use of the Jungle as he had done in 1942 to outmanoeuvre them despite their inferior equipment, often grinding the advance to a halt with the need to clear out the area of Japanese units who had remained behind, lest they be surprised in the future. Little did they know, a far greater surprise awaited them as they approached Singapore’s eastern coast in early November.

Throughout the war, over 50,000 Allied Prisoners had languished in the Changi Prison Camps, used as slave labour in the construction of the Burma Railroad, and subject to random execution by the neighbouring Kempetai headquarters. As Japan’s military situation worsened so had that of supply, and by March 1945 the Prisoners found themselves living on a starvation diet of 8 ounces of rice and 4-6 ounces of vegetables. The vegetable gardens the prisoners had nurtured to supplement their diet were now taken over by the Japanese, troops increasingly malnourished themselves. However as news of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had spread throughout the camp, there grew a hope that soon the war would be over, and that they would soon be in the hands of their comrades.

The piles of bodies of Australian, British, and Dutch troops that greeted the British advance induced a rage in the average British troops that had been unseen even by those who had seen the horrors of Bergen Belsen. From Day One of the invasion the Japanese had been working to kill the tens of thousands of civilian and military prisoners held in the area under direct orders from Itagaki. First burying the corpses in mass graves, then burning them, and then as the British advance grew closer, simply leaving them to rot in the heat. The sight was too much for many, as were the stories had spread back behind the line. Whilst the Seventh Area Army Command chose to commit suicide rather than surrender to the British, their individual troops, complicit or not, found themselves on the receiving end of the retribution. Thousands of Japanese attempting to surrender were shot out of hand, civilians found their homes burned to the ground after being looted, others beaten to death, with some being the victims of even worse crimes whilst attempting to surrender as the British completed their operation in November, a bitter retribution for what had been promised to be a glorious victory.

Massacre and counter-massacre only blending into the melancholy collapse of the Japanese empire, it was a time for score settling. For four years Japan's war policy for Southeast Asia had to meet two contradictory requirements. On the one hand Japan had to emphasize the cause of the "liberation of Asian peoples" in order to justify its operations in alien territories and to gain the support of their nationalist elements for the war effort. Less often noticed is the fact that this justification of the war was also necessary to secure the cooperation of the Japanese people with their own government. This campaign for the "liberation of Asia" succeeded in overcoming domestic suspicions about the prolonged war with China and a reluctance to fight against the technologically superior Allies.

The ideology of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere developed into an indispensable tool for inspiring the Japanese population to fight and endure wartime difficulties. As the vast majority of the Japanese people accepted this ideology, so did many local peoples yet to experience the dubious benefits of Japanese “brotherhood”.

Throughout the war the Japanese relationship with Southeast Asia had thus been a puzzling quagmire of negotiation and coercion. The acquiescence of the Vichy French government to defensive ‘pact’ with the Japanese had led to the effective Japanese occupation of Indochina. This had allowed them not only to undercut Chiang Kai Sek’s Kuomintang in Southern China, but also to transit forces against the American and European colonies should the need have arisen, a prophecy which had become self-fulfilling as western embargoes drove the Japanese into even further desperation as their war with China drained with little resources and money they had left. Throughout the war the Vichy Government had remain in nominal control however, a situation which had survived such events as the end of Vichy sovereignty in late 1942, and the liberation of essentially all of France by the Allies in late 1944.

However by the spring of 1945 the writing was now on the wall, the ‘Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ was not long for this Earth and the French government of the region had begun to show resistance to the increasingly harsh Japanese demands for rice and resources, fearing that to enthusiastically continue the ‘Pact’ would lead to themselves being tried as collaborators by revanchist French courts in the wake of the Japanese collapse. Increasingly frustrated with this attitude, the Japanese moved to finally oust the French, encouraging the individual nations of Indochina to rise up against European colonialism. Whilst the French Army was caught by surprise and successfully arrested en masse by early April, the Japanese could find no major public figures willing to act as their puppets, and despite their continued calls for independence, the region now found itself effectively under military rule.

The situation in Thailand was even more complex, the Japanese invasion in late 1941 was not met with resistance, but instead the government of Field Marshal Plaek Phibun allied themselves with the Japanese and allowed Japanese troops to pass through unhindered. Phibun’s logic was that an alliance with the Japanese would be preferable to an occupation, a choice that seemed justified as the Japanese repeatedly humiliated American and Commonwealth forces in early 1942.

However the Thai took great pride in their nations status as the lone independent state in Southeast Asia, and most resented the increasing number of Japanese troops on the island, which only exacerbated fears that should Japan lose the war, Thailand would be dragged down with her. A fear that was only exacerbated by the increasing numbers of Japanese troops in Thailand, and the slowly increasing pressure on Thai sovereignty. Whilst Phibun’s government had fallen in 1944 it had been replaced largely by Conservatives who did not want to provoke a full Japanese occupation, a stance they were preparing to renounce in line with Japan’s supposed surrender on August 14th, until the Anami coup had led to the Government adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach.

This attitude was unacceptable to the Thai populace, made all the more so by the increasing dread spread by rumours that the Americans were going to use their new Atomic Bombs on Thailand to open up the Burmese front for their Commonwealth Allies, and the more confident public expressions of anti-Japanese sentiment stirred up by charismatic figures such as Pridi Banomyong. Action had to be taken, and the men and women of the Free Thai Movement were not about to disappoint.

In the meantime, the economic life of French Indochina was rapidly deteriorating. After the cessation of communication with France and the elimination of Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States as trade partners, Japan, which had filled only three per cent of French Indochina's total trade in 1938, was the only trade partner. Whilst this had picked up between 1942 and 1943, by fall of 1945, the allied advances and massacre of the Japanese merchant fleet left Indochina having to make do with what her people could produce domestically, and what would be left after the collection of resources by the Japanese.

Rice, fuel, and oil were in great demand. Rubber plants were said to be indiscriminately cut down. In some areas, jute replaced rice planting. In Cochinchina, rice was used to produce fuel oil. Forests deteriorated because of the Japanese demand for lumber to construct boats for transporting Japanese soldiers along the coast to China in case of an enemy landing. This was followed by floods and crop failures, and Tonkin suffered a drastic shortage of rice. This situation was further aggravated by the breakdown in rice shipments from Cochinchina due to the paralysis of the transportation system from American bombing, malnutrition cast a shadow over the land, as famine loomed.

On September 5th, the Free Thai Movement struck at the very heart of the 150,000 Japanese stationed in the country. Under the guise of an urgent message, the Japanese commanders in Bangkok found themselves assassinated by members of the Free Thai Movement dressed as Policemen. Japanese troops in the city were either arrested or shot out of hand as outside the city the lines of transport and communication were quickly secured by troops emerging from the countryside and from miniature forts disguised as air raid shelters. Now installed as Prime Minister, Pridi wasted no time in first renouncing the alliance with the Japanese and then further issuing a declaration of war against their former allies. Whilst more numerous, the blind and beheaded Japanese garrisons were easy prey for the vast guerrilla army that now emerged. 90,000 strong, with their own aircraft and artillery, the Free Thai Movement would no longer simply be involved in hiding American prisoners and negotiations across the ocean, but as the sword of Thai nationalism, the only country to liberate itself from the Japanese yoke.

Ho Chi Minh’s guerrillas were not far behind however, the Thai rising to their west, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria to their north, had made it clear both to them and the 30,000 Japanese troops in Indochina that their war was almost over. General Consul Masao Ishida, the man who had effectively governed Indochina since March, was not driven by the code of Bushido, but that of diplomacy, and his far more rational view of the world allowed him to arrange a truce between the Japanese and the Viet Minh, and provide an offer he believed the Vietnamese would find hard to refuse. In exchange for an unmolested retreat out of Indochina, Japanese forces would grant a large amount of armaments to the Viet Minh, hand over control of all French weapons and personnel, and perhaps most importantly, pledge to hold the Kuomintang back for as long as they could. “Uncle Ho” who would rather see the Japanese escape than have them be wiped out only for a new set of occupiers then to arrive, accepted, and as the Japanese were already concluding their handover, the Viet Minh launched their liberation “offensive”, in early October.

As the Japanese had swept over Indonesia in the final days of 1941 and the early months of 1942 they were undoing over a century of Dutch colonial rule, an oppressive regime that had maintained their rigid social and ethnic apartheid imposed by Dutch elites even after the Netherlands itself had been conquered by Japan’s German allies. Their advance was met with cheers and joyous celebration from the Indonesian peoples in many areas as their former masters were forced to flee against an Asian people, a race they had deemed inferior for decades.

The Dutch had planned to take several imprisoned leaders of the small Indonesian nationalist movements with them as they retreated towards Australia, fearing that in Japanese hands they might become effective collaborators, however the Japanese advanced so quickly that they were forced to abandon their prisoners as they embarked across the Pacific to their new safe haven. It was not long before the Japanese found their prisoners, and that their fears were proven to be correct.

Kusno Sosrodihardjo, better known as Sukarno, was the most prominent amongst these, having led the Indonesian nationalist movement against Dutch colonial rule the Twenties and Thirties. He had first envisioned Japan as the enabler of Indonesian independence in the late twenties, and when found at Sumatra, he greeted the Japanese in the same way that many of his compatriots had, proclaiming, "Independent Indonesia can only be achieved with Dai Nippon”, agreeing to work with the Japanese to fulfil that goal. With every good intention, he began to pave his road.

Despite their proclamations of pan-Asian liberation, the execution of Japanese war plans required that Southeast Asia fulfil particular roles, with Indonesia being no exception. Japan needed the area's natural resources and manpower, without which the continuation of her war in China would not be possible; this meant the exploitation of the area's people. The contradiction between Japanese "liberation theory” and their colonial practice would haunt Sukarno throughout the next three years, as the Japanese progressively forced hundreds of thousands of Indonesians to forced labour in horrific conditions, ensuring that the Japanese war effort was maintained. Many who lived in areas considered important to the war effort experienced arbitrary arrest, torture, or beatings for acts of miscommunication, a problem exacerbated by the large differences in Japanese and Indonesian culture. This led to many, often very public, executions. As resources flowed out of Indonesia, so did the islands food, as many sold themselves into effective slavery to eat. For women this often meant forced prostitution after accepting unspecific forms of ‘work’.

Helping to oversee the appalling atrocities against his people, Sukarno could only comfort himself that the 100,000 European, mostly Dutch, civilians, and the 80,000 Allied prisoners on the islands had it far worse than his countrymen. Most languished in rat infested Concentration Camps with minimal living arrangements. Most occupants were barely fed and wore their clothes until they fell off, the men working long hours of forced labour whilst the women often found themselves becoming ‘Comfort Women’ for the military. Occupants suffered from lack of medical attention, and many died of Beriberi, Cholera, and Dysentery with others taking their own lives as their children were put into separate camps until they grew old enough to work.

Whilst his former masters suffered, he grew increasingly frustrated that his new colleagues were not the harbingers of independence that he had heralded them as. Though he had some sympathy within the Indonesian occupation forces, the navy was keen to keep over Japanese control in place for the duration of the war, lest Indonesian independence complicate their use of Indonesian resources and labour. Whilst the Japanese had helped spread nationalist propaganda as a means of contrasting themselves with the Dutch they had been hesitant to allow any meaningful political or institutional movements that might further Indonesian independence. The most prominent was the Pembela Tanah Air or PETA, meaning [i] Defenders of the Homeland[/i], a collection of military formations made up of Indonesians that the Japanese had established in case of an Allied invasion, though they numbered almost 70,000 men, they were under strict Japanese supervision. However as the war worsened and PETA officers began to agitate for greater autonomy, the Japanese became more open to providing incentives for continued Indonesian collaboration. The Committee for Preparatory Work for Indonesian Independence was formed in March 1945 and quickly transformed into a constitutional convention, with Sukarno presenting a draft constitution on July 15th. With the Philippines lost and Indonesia becoming increasingly unstable the Supreme War Council in Tokyo had agreed to grant Indonesian independence on the 7th of September 1945. As Sukarno, and his members of the committee travelled to Saigon to be informed on the news, an Atomic Bomb fell upon Hiroshima.

When he returned he was informed by the younger, more radical members of the nationalists of the momentous events that had taken place whilst he had been in Saigon, of the new weapon the Americans had now used to destroy two Japanese cities, and Soviet invasion of Manchuria that was devastating the Japanese army. They had heard from listening to western broadcasts that Japan planned to surrender in a few hours and urged him to declare independence immediately. Sukarno refused, wary of a bloodbath that might come from leading an armed revolution against the Japanese occupiers before the Allies could arrive, a battle that might sap the strength of Indonesian forces when the Dutch inevitably returned. Frustrated with his relaxed nature, he was abducted by more radical elements the next day, being held under captivity when his captors heard of the new Anami government, and their determination to continue the war.

The events that followed are unclear, though it seems that the Japanese governor of Indonesia, Moritake Tanabe, had gotten word of the Anami coup as well as the disappearance of Sukarno after he was last seen with the more militant leaders of his fellow nationalists. Refusing to believe that his was coincidence, he presumed that Sukarno had disappeared to lead a widespread revolt after hearing news of the change in Japanese government. After locating where he was being held, Japanese troops opened fire on his captors and the surprised Sukarno. By the time the smoke had cleared from a vicious shoot-out, the figurehead of Indonesian independence lay choking on his own blood as it poured into the soil.

The fact that the now deceased abductee had been held in official PETA building only worsened Tanabe’s concerns, as he ordered that the individual Brigades be disarmed and arrested. The Japanese moved quickly, and managed to largely complete this task with the element of surprise, neutralising what might have otherwise been a powerful Guerilla force. Nonetheless some did disappear, alongside an increasing number of ordinary citizens, as printing presses prepared to unveil a declaration of independence now waved the bloody shirt of Sukarno’s “assassination”, provoking attacks against Japanese soldiers and citizens that devolved into riots, only for these uprisings to be crushed soon after in the cities, and to dissipate into furthering instability in the countryside.

Months passed, and the brutal military rule continued, no longer able to ship Indonesian resources to the Asian mainland in the wake of the destruction Japan’s merchant fleet and the British invasion of Singapore, Tanabe brought about a lessening of the harsh slave labour policies of the past occupation. Nonetheless he had remained ignorant of the promised independence as the disorganised but numerous national forces waged a guerrilla war against the Japanese, a war Tanabe and his fellow officers grew increasingly tired of as they heard of the Soviet invasion of Hokkaido and battle raging in Kyushu. They questioned why fate had left them with tens of thousands of equipped and trained troops fighting to maintain control of territory that had been rendered useless whilst old men and children were throwing themselves at enemy tanks, but without any significant mode of transportation, and Allied naval dominance, they seemed doomed to be spectators of Japan’s climactic battle, until a way out seemingly emerged.

Whilst much of the world had reacted with horror at the revelation of the Changi massacres, the Japanese on Indonesia now saw an opportunity. They had far larger numbers of European prisoners and civilians under their control and whilst they had been used as slaves before, they would now become leverage. On December 1st Tanabe sent a Lord Louis Mountbatten, in overall control of Allied Forces in South East Asia with an offer. He and his men would surrender Indonesia to the Allies, if they would in turn be assured transportation to the Japanese Home Islands to take part in the fight for Kyushu. Until they replied in the affirmative, he would execute 100 Allied civilians and prisoners each day. He did not expect Mountbatten to accept, or even seriously consider his offer, provided that it would require Allied ships literally reinforcing their enemy. However, if he could provoke an Allied invasion of Indonesia, perhaps he could divert from resources from the Kyushu front, thus contributing in some small way to Japan’s Decisive Battle.

Whilst he and his fellow officers awaited the Allied response, the guards of the camps began the process of extermination. In order so as not to provoke rebellions, it was resolved that the extermination ‘countdown’ would focus solely on one camp at the time. The first of those to go where the most useless, those too weak or ill to work, for though s the general situation had worsened this criteria became all the more common amongst the interned civilians and prisoners of war. Though even amongst the weakest, there was always a weaker, and in this way, the situation was no different from any other pattern of tragedy in the many catastrophes that human history had suffered.

Ambarawa was a work camp for making rope. Based in central Java it mainly contained woman and children, those less able to the do hard labour of the men. Nonetheless work was still expected, no matter how menial. By late November the situation became so bad that food or medicine were so scarce that not many people were able to work. There were others who simply refused to abandon their seriously ill relatives or spouses. Others who were numb to beatings and threats after over three years of such torment, had simply given up, leaving their children and other dependents to fend for themselves.

Hard labour had always had very high casualty rates, with little concern for safety or welfare it had become commonplace when many taken out to work simply did not come back. This had been the plan of the armed men who had arrived in trucks to take those out to ‘work’. Some did indeed go, under the belief that work might mean food. Some refused, only to be shot on sight. Those too sick, or too lost in their nightmares were often dragged.

And so the process began.

As news of the countdown began to spread there was an outrage across the western world. The slaughter was seen as worse in many ways, than the earlier Changi massacre for the fact that this slaughter was so systematic in its process and in its targets. Though the Anami government gave no response, affirmative, or negative to the actions taking place in Indonesia, the leaders of the three main western powers fighting in the Pacific found themselves being presented with options.

The British government, still embroiled in sweeping up the last elements of Japanese resistance in Malasyia, found themselves too overextended to launch an offensive on their own, with much of their Pacific fleet committed either to Majestic or Zipper. For the United States this problem was much the same, with all resources committed to the final victory against the Home Islands, Indonesia was of low strategic priority for as long as the Japanese fleet remained at the bottom of the ocean.

For some however, there were no other priorities. Whilst in war the needs to individuals can often be swept up in the vast canvass of logistics and tactics, the actions, the motivations, of individuals desperate for vengeance can, every now and then, further the suffering of millions.

Though No. 18 Squadron RAAF operated in Australian uniforms and with American Lend Lease aircraft, it was in many ways a Dutch squadron, being made up most of Dutch airmen who had successfully escaped the Japanese advance into the Dutch East Indies. Though their ground crew were Australian, their aircraft bore the Dutch flag and they were commanded by a Dutch officer. They had arrived at Balikpapan in Borneo on July 1945, shortly after the liberation of the island by Australian troops. In the preceding months the squadron's main task was to drop propaganda leaflets and locate and drop supplies to Allied personnel in prison camps throughout Indonesia. A relatively simple task in comparison to their many raids against Japanese shipping in Papua New Guinea, and one that now became intolerably frustrating for the squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Jessuen as he heard of the Japanese declarations. Like many other pilots and ground crew in his base, he had relatives, friends, people he had reassured that everything was going to be alright by the leaflets he had been commissioned to drop. Now he would drop something else.

Of the 11,000 Mustard Gas Bombs that Australia had in her possession, he had access to several hundred. It had been a natural Allied precaution to have stockpiles of chemical weaponry ready to be used in case of an Axis sneak attack, and with the threat of invasion gone, the Australians had often done the same. Despite their widespread use of gas against the Chinese, there was no evidence to point to the Japanese ever using chemical weapons against the western Allies. It was this fact that Jeussen was relying on as he personally led his Dutch B-25’s over the Sixteenth Army Headquarters on the outskirts of Batavia. He knew he would be court-martialled, if not shot, for his belligerence, he could only hope that during this Christmas period, Tanabe wouldn’t be wearing a Gas Mask when his special gifts came down on top of him.

Tanabe had instinctively retreated to the cellar as the distinctive Allied planes flew up ahead. Air raids had not been uncommon in Java, especially in the wake of the Australian victories in Borneo and retreating calmly to the nearest place of safety had become second nature to any Japanese officer in Indonesia. As he heard the crumps around him he grew concerned, as the bombs fell nearer and nearer he had to wipe the soot from his khakis as he waited out the raid with as much patience as a man who knows he isn’t entirely in control of his surroundings can muster.

With a violent shake a roar the door was blown open, with dust flowing in, he and his fellow officers and staff became to choke and splutter as they heard another crash but no explosion, only a low popping sound that one might experience when they’ve opened a bottle of Champagne. Mustard gas, heavier than air soon entered the shelter that would become his tomb. Unlike the brick dust that had glided in a few moments beforehand, this was a stark yellow fog that slowly moved in on the cellars inhabitants. Those who had experienced gas attacks in China clambered to find masks, or handkerchiefs to put over their faces, only to find that their efforts had been in vain.

As Mustard Gas enters the lungs they begin to swell and blister throwing the body into spasmodic twisting as blisters break out and burn on the skin whilst the respiratory system slowly closes in. Tanabe died quickly, and in great pain. In retrospect he was lucky. There were many Japanese troops and Indonesian civilians who believed that they had survived the worst, only to find themselves covered in blisters in the preceding days, coughing and sneezing blood as their bodies also went into shock. Medical recovery teams, having learned the lessons of the First World War, were forced to wait for the gas to dissipate. In the case of Tanabe’s tomb this had taken several days, by then the story had already broken.

Jeussen was fairly open about what he had done and reported it immediately as his aircraft began their return trip. Whilst he had considered crashing his plane into a Japanese target after the raid, he had considered that to be immoral without the consent of this fellow air crew, and though there is some discussion as to whether he would have committed suicide after landing, Australian military police were already waiting to arrest him as he stepped out of his B-25. Though awaiting trial the Australians, and shortly after, their other Allies, did not initially comment on the raid being a rogue assault, or acknowledge the raid at all.

Considering the final events of Indonesia’s chapter in the war, It is difficult to see whether Jeussen’s raid had any direct effect on the plight of European former colonists in Japanese occupied Indonesia. Tanabe knew perfectly well that his demand to the Allies was fundamentally unworkable. Though the western powers were generally perceived to be weak willed and meek, the notion of them agreeing to actively reinforce the Japanese as the struggle for Kyushu hung in the balance was not one the leader of the Japanese forces in Indonesia believed to be particularly plausible. What he had hoped to bring about was a forced confrontation with his forces, to allow him to contribute to the final battle even if he sat thousands of miles away from the Home Islands themselves. In the midst of the slaughter of both civilians and prisoners now being carried out by Japanese troops he would finally get his wish, though his violently blistered lungs had long ceased to function.

His appointed successor, Major General Nakao Yahagi had been on Sumatra when the Mustard Gas attack on Jakarta had taken place, as he was informed of his new position from the headquarters of the 25th Army in Bukittinggi he did not hold any less resolve over distracting Allied attention from the sokoku. Despite his intention to fight on, he was not blind to how precariously his military position now teetered.

The Royal Navy had formed tight crown of thorns around the various major islands after eradicating what was left of the small Japanese Carrier force prior to the invasion of Singapore, with Allied dominance in the air complicating any further means of travel between Java and Sumatra. Borneo, where the bulk of Japanese heavy equipment had been transported now sat in Australian hands. Ironically fuel was not an issue in oil rich Indonesia but there remained few planes and tanks for the Japanese to operate. Ammunition of all types gradually degraded as former PETA militia’s battled his troops in the jungles. The hope of a new Stalingrad in Manila was quashed by the fact that industrial warfare was increasingly no longer an option.

Instead the chosen strategy had been one of consecutive withdrawal via various costly pitched battles that would help bleed Allied strength, eventually drawing the Commonwealth and Dutch forces into great mountain range with many active volcanoes that runs along the length of the island. The weather on Java, hot and damp in the lowlands, with no seasonal variation; would be a nightmare without ready supplies of inoculants. The cooler highlands better served to protect Japanese troops from disease, whilst allowing for rice to be grown on the terraced hillsides. Refineries would be set alight and road and rail links between the islands ports sabotaged as far as possible. The ‘defence’ of Java was to become one large scorched earth policy and in its wake a bleeding sore, perpetually draining Allied resources away from their operations against the Home Islands.

Though some feared the Japanese would have to fight the Indonesian insurgents whilst waging a guerrilla campaign, it was expected that the arrival of the Dutch would force the Indonesians into an alliance of convenience with the remaining Japanese forces. In confidence, or in desperation, the trap without springs had been set.

Oboe 4, the Australian and British landings against Jakarta and Surabaya, began on January 25th, 1946 with vast plumes of ominously dark smoke rising into the air. To the dismay of those entering into the largely undefended cities it came not solely from their shells and incendiary bombs but from the rings of fire that now surrounded the Barat and Timur refineries. The mass slaughter of civilians and prisoners, European and Indonesia, was no longer fitting any timetable. As the Commonwealth, Dutch and Japanese forces fought in the cities, whilst the Indonesian guerrillas within the jungles prepared to face whoever the victim was, the massacres were perpetrated by retreating Japanese soldiers who knew their reign was coming to an end. Whether this was a direct response to Jeussen’s actions or merely a copy of the atrocities committed during the Operation Zipper remains debated to this day. The subject of whether the many ‘reprisals’ conducted by Dutch soldiers on Japanese civilians and prisoners were officially encouraged remains equally contentious.

Even as oil soaked rain drops mixed with the blood seeping into the soil from the manic slaughter, the Americans were no longer concerned with Indonesia. Through naval codes they could read the reports of the surviving officers of the Indonesian occupation to Tokyo, where they stated with full confidence that they had been attacked with gas, and awaited further instructions. For a junta so dedicated to virulent and apocalyptic announcements of their own righteousness, the Truman administration found their silence deeply concerning.

The news of the Batavia raid was met with great alarm from the Supeme War Council, even as they sat personally safe under the hills outside Nagano. The Allies had never used gas before, and it was feared that the strike on Java that killed so many Japanese officers may have been a forewarning of what was to come. Though Japan had made great use of Chemical weaponry in their war against the Chinese, they had never allowed the deployment of gas against the western Allies , to the point that battlefield commanders were urged to ignore isolated tactical uses of gas by Allied forces and avoid retaliation.

Considering the status of Japan in late 1945, this was a perfectly rational policy to maintain. Though the Allies had feared that vast amounts of Japanese gas had been stockpiled by the Japanese for use in the final battle for Kyushu as it had been in China, Japanese production of Chemical weaponry had been in decline for almost a decade with virtually nothing being produced after 1941 and had even ended Chemical warfare training for new recruits in 1942. Though the Japanese had recalled all chemical weaponry to the Home Islands in 1944, this had still only left them with an arsenal of 7,500 tonnes of Mustard, Chlorine and other gasses, which combined with a lack of bomber aircraft and artillery, left them unable to retaliate in any meaningful sense if the Allies were to attack. The predictable wind patterns of Japan as well as a serious shortage of gas masks had made this contingency especially worrying, with casualties predicted to be in the millions due to the Allies dominance of the skies.

Though despite their Chemical deficiencies, the Japanese Biological warfare program was highly advanced, second only to the British in terms of destructive potential and premier in their varied arsenal of Anthrax, Cholera, Botulism, Typhoid, Smallpox and a list of other horrors developed and turned into weaponry by the members of Unit 731, based in Manchuria under General Shirō Ishii. Whilst the British had experimented upon Sheep, Ishii had subjected thousands of Chinese, Russians, South East Asians and a small number of Allied prisoners and civilians to a vast number of sadistic experiments, often of dubious scientific value, in his quest to develop weapons that might break the stalemate in China.

By the Summer of 1945 it was clear he had failed, and fearing a Soviet invasion from the north in the wake of their German allies surrender, the Unit had attempted to eradicate any signs of their presence and the atrocities that they had carried out, destroying their facilities at Pingfang , Dalian and Zhongma whilst the main staff integrated themselves into the Kwantung Army, before fleeing to Japan as their mainland empire collapsed in the face of the Soviet invasion. Though even as life’s work lay in ruins or in the hands of Japan’s enemies, it had not all been for nothing, for his greatest accomplishment, and the means to deliver it had accompanied him in his flight. In the face of American Chemical and Nuclear supremacy, the question was whether Bubonic Plague could prove to the decisive equaliser.

At several times during the war the Japanese had flirting with using their ‘super weapon’ against the numerically and industrially superior Allied forces. Saipan, an island from where American bombers could reach Japan, was considered too dangerous to fall into American hands and in the prelude to the expected American invasion twenty biological warfare specialists and the equipment necessary to bombard the Americans with plague and other diseases had been sent to the island should the Japanese decide that it was too important to lose. However their ship had been sunk by an American submarine during their journey, and subsequent voyages were cancelled. Unit 731 had also been preparing weapons for the defence of Okinawa only for the Americans to land and surround the island before anything could be dispatched. Now the Americans were on Japan proper, a fact that made use of the fleas and rats that would carry the plague all the less attractive, for the often static frontline on Kyushu would almost certainly lead to the infection of Japanese troops as well, and with less access to medicines, could actually cause more casualties to themselves than the enemy. Use against Soviet occupied Hokkaido was also out of the question for this reason, not to mention the propaganda value of the Japanese attacking their own civilians, which could only help to legitimise whatever revolution Sanzo Nosaka claimed to be spreading. Though Japan was now a battlefield, it was where their most powerful weapon could not. Of course, that did not mean that there did not exist other targets further afield.

The plan was uninspiringly dubbed "Operation PX". Initiated as a joint army-navy project, the operation called for Japan’s remaining 1-400 Submarine Aircraft Carriers to launch a biological attack against the West Coast of America, first by launching their planes to spread plague, cholera, and other pathogens from the air, then by having submarine crews themselves run ashore, carrying further germs amidst the chaos. The entire attack was a suicide mission even if it survived the high risk journey towards the US, but nonetheless the plan was finalised on 26th of March, 1945 and was due to proceed, until General Umezu Yoshijiro, Chief of the General Staff, stepped in and ordered the plan scrapped at the last minute.

Yoshjiro had neither spoken in favour or against the Anami coup, this fact, along with his stature had allowed him to not only survive the wave of Court Martials and house arrests that had followed the events of August 15th, but also to remain on the Supreme War Council. Though most were in agreement that the plan seemed to be the best means of retaliation in case that the Americans chose to launch further Chemical attacks, he continued to protest their use passionately, arguing that it would only cause further Allied use of Chemical weapons rather than cease them. For the first time since the original Atomic Bombings, council meetings became heated again with both Anami and Yoshjiro beginning to abandon calm and etiquette over rants and insults. It was only when Yoshjiro’s position itself was overtly threatened that he proceeded to abstain from the further comment, though the enmities remained unresolved.

As Japan’s two remaining I-400’s were recalled from their lone hunts against Allied, whilst Ishii was set to work breeding the flies that would be used against the unsuspecting residents of San Francisco, the bitterness and alarm within Yoshjiro grew.

Several days later, he acted on them, for even if Kenji Doihara had indeed only wanted a drink and a game of Chess when he had called him at his home, the conversation would likely prove to be interesting nonetheless.

Though he was arguably the second most powerful man in Japan, Kenji Doihara did not live in this bubble. A ruthless careerist, he had fought his way up from the poverty of his youth to lead the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, going on to fight a victorious intelligence war against both the Chinese guerrillas within Japanese occupied territory and those across the frontline. This had won him illustrious praise from the Japanese military establishment, and further promotions. By December 1945 he had been appointed the prestigious rank of Inspector General of Military Training, and had been given command of the huge 1st General Army, the force responsible for the defence of the Kanto Plain. His predecessor, Field Marshal Hajime Sugiyama had been deemed insufficiently patriotic in the wake of Anami’s coup d’etat, his role in the crushing of a failed coup in with similar aims in 1936 left Suhiyama suspect. Doihara had gotten where he was by never being suspect, keeping a self-centred state of mind, free from the Imperial and Religious delusions of others, he had been willing to join any clique that might raise his profile, and commit any act that might further his career. In this aim he now found himself too successful, he had amassed a huge power base, with roles that had left him almost solely responsible for the defence of Honshu but the deeds in which he had attained it, those of unprovoked aggression, slavery, forced prostitution, and his mass circulation of opium in China would ensure that he would hang should he have to face an Allied court.

Due to this eventuality, it is little surprise that he had been one of the foremost supporters of the coup that had seen Anami installed and the war continued, he had been sceptical as to the merits of the ‘Decisive Battle’ strategy though he had thought it to at least have a chance of success, one that would ensure his prominence in Japanese society. He was right to be sceptical, as American atomic bombings had eradicated the chance of the Americans being pushed into the sea, even as they encountered ghastly casualties it was clear now to Kenji that American victory was assured, for they could replace their casualties with relative ease, whilst Japan had long scraped her barrels of experienced troops. He had little doubt that the Americans would eventually land on the Kanto Plain, where he would likely be outnumbered three to one, and without the massed reserves of Kamikazes, food, and ammunition that the Sixteenth Area Army on Kyushu were enjoying his own attempt at turning the Americans back could only have one outcome, not just the loss of his position, but likely his life. Kenji saw no glory in dying for an Emperor, especially not the meek little man that was currently the hostage of delusional buffoons, though he realised that a vengeful Allied War Crimes trial would likely take him by the noose if not by the sword. He could flee, but with the world universally contemptuous of the Anami regime, where could he hide, and for how long? With all the conventional options gone, there seemed to be only one, unorthodox, chance.

He had gotten as far as far as he had in large part due to the vast array of connections that he had established for himself, and now he would utilise them to their greatest extent, all those who had supported the coup, but were now having doubts as to the success of the Decisive Battle, those who hated Anami for the way he put the Imperial System into disrepute, those who feared an impending Socialist revolution instigated by an encroaching Soviet Union, those who had been led to the believe the Americans only had two bombs. Those who wanted to prevent any attempt by Anami to provoke biological and chemical reprisals against Japan by the Allies.

Individually, and in small groups, he had begun facilitate discussions of the similar conclusions these groups had all come to, despite the divergent paths in which many had gotten there. Soon he would press home his own plan on how to proceed.

SANDMAN: The Culmination of Operation Majestic

Though the Japanese dreaded an immediate large scale Chemical follow-up to the assassination of Tanabe, Truman was personally furious at Jeussen’s insubordinate actions, a fact that had been explained to him by the Australian ambassador who had also confirmed that he had used Mustard Gas that the United States alongside their British allies had sent to the Australians in case of a Japanese invasion of their homeland. Whether the Japanese on the island had incorrectly identified the aircraft as an American bomber, or one of the Mustard Gas bombs had turned out to be a dud with American designations on it, he could only speculate, though it was clear from the de-encrypted Japanese naval codes that the Japanese had somehow come to believe that the attack was of American origin. The fact that they had remained eerily quiet about this potential propaganda coup invited several questions and those who had advocated the use of gas as they had seen the casualties on Kyushu mount reckoned that they had the answers. The Japanese were treading carefully on the gas issue because they were terrified that the weapon would be their undoing, which also likely meant that they had little means on retaliation. Though it was impossible to correctly guess that the Japanese only had a miniscule supply of gas, it was readily apparent that they were running out of aircraft and artillery to deliver it. The United States on the other hand, had no such limitations.

Roosevelt was a spirited and vocal opponent of the use of Chemical Weaponry, however as the Japanese openly made use of gas against China, and war with Germany drew inexorably near he had acquiesced to the pleas of his advisors for America to be prepared for an all-out Chemical war with enemies who had shown a willingness to use such devices in the past. In typical American fashion this was soon on its way to building itself into the largest Chemical weapons program that the world had ever seen. With a workforce of tens of thousands, and hundreds of millions of dollars, the United States had literally produced millions of chemical grenades, shells, bombs alongside 87,000 tons of Mustard, Chlorine, and Lewisite gas that could be delivered by more than 110,000 spray tanks from American aircraft. Despite his protests, Roosevelt had become the reluctant father of a Chemical arsenal larger than the rest of the world combined.

Despite this newfound ability, Roosevelt remained unflinching in his opposition to deploying Gas weaponry without the Axis having used them first and the Chemical Warfare Service, responsible for this vast array of Chemicals, would complain that Roosevelt would immediately reject any proposal they would make, often without even reading them. This was despite the fact that large testing grounds they had access to in Utah had allowed them to perfect strategies to be used in cave warfare and against German and Japanese cities, and reports that up to 2500 thousand American lives could have been saved on Iwo Jima had he been willing to use gas, Roosevelt would take his staunch opposition to his grave.

Truman was now the inheritor of this burden , he did not have any enthusiasm for gas warfare, having experienced it during the First World War but he did not have the same moral disgust for the weapon that his predecessor had had. The American people were growing more positive towards the concept as well, were fear of the quiet, sudden, death that gas would bring had once brought revulsion, stories of Japan’s own gas atrocities against America’s Chinese allies and heavy casualties of the Pacific conflict had gradually eroded this opposition. The continuing bloodbath on Kyushu had finally created majority support for the use of gas against the Japanese and amongst banners demanding more atomic attacks there were also those beginning to appear that read “You can Cook ‘em better with Gas!”. If public support for the invasion was fragile, how could he explain the continued disuse of a potent weapon, one that had cost the tax payer half a Billion dollars to develop?

The military had already had plans underway in case the contingency had arose that the United States would ever need to use their mammoth arsenal, and whether to dread or relief he would finally authorise in the name of ending the war as quickly as possible. He had promised the Japanese that every righteous weapon would be used to against them, now he was going to unleash those of Hell.

Most Japanese troops had arrived on Kyushu during the summer months of 1945 as the Army had amassed troops on the island for the upcoming ‘Decisive Battle’, the combination of the finest new recruits, and the most battle hardened veterans had arrived in a land of tropical beauty where Banana’s fell from the trees and sugarcane could be snapped off and eaten whilst gazing out into the endless horizon of mountains. Given top priority in terms of food, equipment and in virtually every other aspect of military life, morale was high as they trained in the hills and caves that they would soon be defending.

The bombing came, relentless and meticulous, forcing soldiers to dive for cover that would often be no use, then there were the Atomic Bombs, forcing them to watch as the beautiful landscapes they had fallen in love with was incinerated and scorched. Then the Americans themselves had come, unleashing the largest naval barrage in history to accompany larger and more widespread bombing raids than ever before. The carefully hoarded reserves inside the coast, waiting to throw the Americans back into the sea, had been incinerated by further Atomic attacks and those now facing the Americans could only now fight until their ammunition was exhausted and their knives and sickles blunted, with those in the next caves preparing to do the same as the Americans crept towards them. They had killed tens of thousands of Americans, injured hundreds of thousands more, it never seemed to matter, no matter how many were killed more would arrive, with heavier arms, and the knowledge that the men holed up in their caves had little left to fight them with.

Their own casualties had been nothing short of nightmares, both by Allied domination of the skies and the seas, those who had sacrificed themselves in their Kamikaze craft and those condemned to the slow Kamikaze of cave fighting in the south. The artillery fired and bombs fell night and day. Supplies were forced onto secondary roads until scarcity of fuel had begun to require an even greater use of couriers to carry food, water, and ammunition by foot, reducing supply to a trickle.

Life at the front had become a cold and hungry struggle for survival not only against the Americans but against the elements themselves as black rain and ash fell from the sky and the night seemed perpetually present. Some chose to charge against the Americans so that they would grant them death’s sweet release, other surrendered, praying that their families would understand the absurdity of trying to remain at post for another waking moment. The majority muddled on in depressed silence, blessing the few times it was safe to sleep or when there was enough food to eat. Drinking the black rain was discouraged officially, advice that was ignored for mouths so parched that they could barely whisper and croak, if it was indeed dangerous to their health they did not care, having lost all concern for such matters, as they contorted themselves into the monosyllabic and unthinking machine men that helped shut out the pain of their surroundings.

On January 10th there was a change, a passing of something, as the day grew brighter and the air clearer. The Americans simply stopped coming. At first it was expected that it was only a local delay, but then reports around the front came in and rumour spread. It had become clear by January 12th that the American advance had indeed halted across the island whilst bombing raids and artillery where also reported to be dying down. As they enjoyed the silence they entertained hopes that perhaps the propagandists that came around from time to time had been correct in asserting that the American public would eventually grow tired of horrendous casualties and acquiesce to continued Japanese independence. The couriers could travel faster, practically uninhibited by bombings, and for the first time in in weeks those at the fronts ate adequately and slept soundly, their cotton pods seeming like velvet quilts in the knowledge that at any moment a large American officer would brandish a large white flag and inform them that the American and Japanese governments had agreed it was a war crime to allow anyone to try to survive on this wretched mass grave.

As they awoke to an artificial sunrise they realised how naïve such hopes had been. As the citizens of Kumamoto finally met the fate determined for them on November 12th, on the other side of the island the stone Buddha statues of Uzuki were torn apart with the rest of the city, as those left within its walls, including the last Japanese reserve division in the southern part of the island, burned in their sleep. As the guns began to bark once more and the planes swooped overheard discharged yellowish smoke from their hulls, the Americans did indeed appear, but not the ones of their dreams. A nightmare army clad in emotionless, inhuman masks charging towards them as the confused defenders felt their throats begin to seize up before the bayonets pierced through their bodies, never to leave, to line its mass graves for eternity.

From the moment the first spray canister was attached and the first Chemical mortar shells were loaded, the Operation has been plagued by enduring controversy of the scale, the effects, and the enduring casualties one where too favourable an advocacy or too harsh a condemnation has been known to provoke fist fights and divide families for decades. Yet for all of the historiographical debate over the morality and decision making process of Sandman, the most important factor in its formation has often been the most forgotten.

America was running out of time.

The Kanto Plain, where the majority of the Japanese population lived and where Operation Coronet would fall was historically vulnerable to the seasonal monsoons that struck in the mid-April where the pleasant sub-tropical landscape would be battered by thunder storms, coastal fronts, cold air damming and tornados turning the much of the terrain into an environment of vast pools of rice, muck, and water combining into an often impassable sludge. Roads would become elevated with makeshift bridges being likely to shatter. Instead of exploiting their advantages in armour and mobility, American troops would have to rely on little more than the artillery they could carry into the rugged, well-defended foothills.

For two years meteorologists had studied the prevailing weather conditions over the area and had concluded that the most opportune time to avoid this debacle would be a landing in March, before the worst of the rains, where an armoured thrust would smash the largely static Japanese defences and occupy the entire Kanto Plain before the summer. The original [i]Majestic[/i] had foreseen a campaign of 90 days and had been moved forward to November rather than December to ensure completion of the operation before the beginning of February, providing a month to build the airfields necessary to support [i]Coronet[/i] before it was scheduled to begin on the 1st of March. The destruction wrought by Typhoon Louise had complicated these plans however, delaying the invasion of Kyushu by two weeks, whilst heavier than expected Japanese resistance on the island, exacerbated by vast numbers of Kamikazes, had considerably slowed the invasion despite a relentless aerial bombardment that had included the destruction of over three Japanese divisions with three Atomic Bombs.

By the beginning of 1946 it was clear that the Japanese on the island were a spent force, low on supplies and ammunition, reports of delirious skeletal Japanese troops with nothing to fight with but bayonets and spears began to increase and it was suggested that soon the Japanese forces on the island might simply starve to death in lieu of a retreat from their cave-ridden mountains. As attractive an option that would have universally been under normal circumstances, there was no time to wait for the enemy to simply fade away, the US advance had pushed the Japanese north to frontline roughly stretching between Miyanojo, Kobayashi, and Sadohara with thousands of square miles inside the southern third deemed the minimum amount of land needed for airfield construction, still in Japanese hands. Even if the Japanese on the island had only a month left before complete exhaustion, it would be enough to potentially delay Coronet and with it, the end of the war by several months, months that ensure even more American casualties. Thus it’s quite possible that Truman would have found the solution into breaking this deadlock in Mustard Gas regardless of Jeussen’s actions, considering the growing popularity in public and especially military opinion. The strength of the latter’s advocacy can be seen by the fact that Sandman had been in development meticulously since December.

Built up of endlessly studied photos of Japanese supply routes and even the smallest supply dumps, a frequency chart had been drawn over Japanese held territory and taking into account the wind patterns of the area targets for the mass dispersal of Mustard Gas over a two-day period had been concluded. The Operation involved three stages, and preparations had taken almost a fortnight as American troops and bomber crews had to be supplied with sprayers, shells, grenades, and gas masks. The dropping of Atomic Bombs over Uzuki and Kumamoto had been the first stage, removing their status as major transport hubs as they had burned. This denied any major attempt to retreat from the vast fumigation that was the second stage whilst also preventing any significant medical aid from entering the affected zones before it was too late. Though they lay more than twenty miles from the limit of the gas dispersal, many survivors of the bombings would stagger towards the front, hoping that the concentrations of water, food and medical supplies would give them a better chance of surviving their ailments. These shuffling masses, the couriers bringing supplies to the front, and the endless number of civilians and troops busy retrenching areas adjacent to the front in the knowledge that they would soon become battlegrounds, all found themselves in contact with the mass of planes flying overhead and the layer upon lair of the gas that they were emitting from their sprayers. The gas covered deep trails, sank into gorges, drifted into caves and penetrated the skin, in dispersed quantities, the tens of thousands of tonnes dropped between Marushiro and Nobeoka led to very few of the painful seizures and quick deaths that direct exposure brought. As most correctly identified Mustard gas as it was dropped there was panic as hundreds of thousands across hundreds of square miles scrambled to conceal themselves or to get access to the small supply of gas masks the Japanese had on the island, many screaming hysterically or crying out as the yellow-ish clouds dispersed and drifted down to the Earth, settling over the landscape

What followed was a sense of mass relief for those who had been exposed, they were neither dead nor blind and indeed seemed to be unscathed. Some celebrated that the American gas had ‘failed’ due to their poor knowledge of the weapon. Most were encouraged to return to work by soldiers who knew that the time bomb was ticking. Two hours later the irritation began, most of those exposed began to become intolerably itchy in the preceding hours as their skin began to redden. As night fell those in affected areas had come over with violent cases of fever whilst from the raw skin boils began to appear. The panic and hysteria returned, for those overflowing the hospitals already unable to cope with conventional casualties, they were left shivering on the ground. Many still able to walk had turned blind with their eyes swollen, irritated, and torn to the point that sight had become impossible. Amongst the screams and the shivers continuously tripped and stumbled in their attempts to seek help, Doctors and Nurses, coughing blood, could only reply that there was none to give.

At the front artillery, mortar and bombs blazed over the Japanese defenders, the vast majority of them without masks, as the Americans troops, in a resemblance of the mass offensives of the First World War, stampeded over blistered, writhing, bodies of those condemned and didn’t look back as they advanced further than they had for weeks.

The battle for Kyushu was over, except for the shivering.

On the 27th of January the Supreme War Council gathered in the mountains outside Nagano under which the war had been directed ever since the completion of the vast underground complex in Matsushiro that had been designed for such a purpose. By January 1946 the council had been significantly reduced following the events of the last 5 months. The Emperor officially remained at its head but now took little part in proceedings as he languished under de facto arrest in his quarters, usually choosing to be absent from meetings in which he knew his presence would only further legitimise the Anami regime. Due to practical concerns over the need for two positions for a branch of the Imperial Armed Forces that had lost her last surface ships of any significance during the short lived naval battle that preceded Operation Majestic, the roles of Navy Minister and Chief of Navy General Staff had been merged under Matome Ugaki, who had been moments from suicide when he heard of the coup.

From out of exile and irrelevance, Yōsuke Matsuoka had returned as Foreign Minister, who was favoured for the same virulent hatred of the Soviet Union that had been his downfall in 1941, as the last foreign embassies began to make plans to leave Japan as the imminent threat of an American invasion grew closer, his role was also significantly reduced to being the messenger of the Anami regime. Without any room allowed for compromise or independence of office, his aesthetically remarkable return from retirement in fact left him in a role better suited to a parrot or a broken record, and he found himself subsequently receiving little more regard than either of those two objects might have expected.

Anami had combined the roles of War Minister and Prime Minister, and had established himself in an essentially sovereign position above the group, allowing for little discussion when his mind had been made up beforehand, and ending any disagreement with a firm declaration as to his own opinion. Many resented this arrogant spectacle, fearing that Anami was indeed preparing to crown himself Emperor after he had defeated the Allies, though no-one would speak aloud these thoughts, and often chose to reluctantly agree with his assurance that this was only a temporary measure in regards to the criticality of Japan’s situation, and that he would step down after the emergency had passed.

That seemed a bleak prospect from the information relayed by General Yoshijirō Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff, to his four peers. After finally being able to make contact with Sixteenth Army Headquarters of Kyushu, he had been one of the first on Japan’s largest Home Island to hear of the massacre that had taken place only a few days beforehand and had been shocked as Isamu Yokoyama relayed to him the events of Operation Sandman. The American’s mass use of Mustard Gas had finally buckled the Japanese defences that had checked their advance for over two months, with tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers alike having succumbed to exposure, with over a hundred thousand more continuing to suffer and likely to die due to the inability to move medical aid into the area. He already been consistently warning that he was about to run out of ammunition since the beginning of January, but now with the American seizure of many of his supply dumps and the collapse of his complex supply network of secondary roads and couriers, the little ammunition he had left he could no longer transport, with a similar situation regarding food and water. He concluded that he had no means of counter attack without new troops and now supplies of food fuel and ammunition, and that the Americans could likely occupy the entire island if they had continued to advance, and that the only reason they hadn’t was due to them already having occupied the necessary space to construct a sufficient number of airfields for an invasion of the Kanto Plain. Even with harsh static interrupting many parts of their radio communication, Umezu could tell that he was speaking to a broken man, one that had had all the fight drained from him after witnessing his troops be hit by more force than in the rest of the Pacific War combined. He had cursed the Americans, and Umezu cursed them tenfold, for their use of gas had now guaranteed the operation that he had so desperately tried to prevent would now go ahead. He did not like to dwell on how insignificant the battle for Kyushu might look when the Americans took vengeance on Japan after they realised that they had been infested with plague.

He now had his own plans however, and whilst he was now informing Anami and his politically castrated pawns, it had been the head of the Ist General Army whom he had contacted first. In the knowledge that he had set wheels in motion, he was happy to pretend to nod in agreement with the rest of the Council as Operation PX was officially endorsed and timetables where laid out. He could only hope that his own little operation would not be beaten to the finishing line by the lust for national suicide exhibited by the men around him.

The February Counter-Coup

In many ways the beginning of February had been the quietest period that the Japanese people had seen in quite some time. On Kyushu the guns had fallen silent in late January after the nightmarish Sandman had ensured them enough territory to begin construction of the airfields that would support their landing on the Kanto Plain. From across the Tsugaru Strait the Soviets had sent little other than occasional bombs, shells, and seditious music, and though this remained a situation of some concern from the people of the North, it was a relative relaxation compared to the strategic bombing offensive of the previous, one that the United States had greatly scaled back as its value had grown more and more dubious. They had subsequently surgically struck at individual logistical and strategic targets, though even this was drawing to a close as targets began to become less and less frequent. The Japanese people knew that this was a calm before the storm, that the Americans would almost certainly launch another mass invasion soon and that the Soviets might join them from the north, but for now they were at least in the eye of the storm and even as many began to grow painfully hungry they basked in the relative peace and quiet that had allowed them to pray for loved ones overseas and dream of peace soon to come, either from Anami’s deliverance or in the wake of his departure. Unbeknownst to the Japanese people the impression of temporary peace was only a mist to disguise the fact that their government was unveiling the most dangerous escalation so far.

With the Nuclear Age still in its infancy, the 400 foot long I-400’s were easily the largest submarines yet created, weighing over 3,500 tons, large enough to carry small aircraft, and with tanks capable of storing enough to fuel to carry her crew around the world. The ships had been the brainchild of Admiral Yamamoto designed with the goal of enabling Japan to bomb the West Coast of America, and though the legendary Admiral had been dead for two years, they now prepared to set sail on a mission that would hopefully honour the successes of the Kido Butai that had laid waste to Pearl Harbour, whilst at the same time greatly overshadowing the raid in terms of military significance. Achieving the latter aim would seem to be immensely difficult as each unit could carry 3 Aichi M6A Floatplanes who in turn could carry 2 bombs each. Though the original plan had initially been to build 18 1-400’s, the death of Yamamoto lost Submarine Aircraft Carriers their foremost advocate and the commission’s had consistently lowered until only three would be built. Of these three one ship, 1-402 had been converted into a transport submarine in June 1945 rendering it useless for the operation and leaving the Japanese with only two units, six planes, and twelve bombs to carry out a mission intended to end the war.

The Anami government placed its faith in the fact that the contents of these bombs, as well as the other pathogens the crews of the monster submarines would come ashore with, did not need to come in large quantities, initially. The human body could produce a might arsenal of germs, and soon those of the American people would be put to work in reproducing the pathogens created by others, recycling the initial assault over and over again. Yamamoto had once stressed that the only way Japan could ensure peace with America was if Japanese troops occupied Washington D.C. and all other cities along the way. Borne by the divine wind itself, Japan’s microscopic allies would now fulfil that mission on their own.

The real issue was of getting the bombs to their target in the first place. The choice of targets were a populous American cities to avenge the mass murder of Sandman but the capacity to get there was reliant on Japan’s supply of diesel, now at its lowest extent since the industrial era. Though enough could be spared to ensure a one-way journey to the American west coast, the destruction of Japan’s road and rail network had ensured that by the time the order to proceed had come through, the refuelling of the Submarines was nowhere near completion. The breeding of the plague fleas that were to be dispersed had also ensured delays to the point that it would only be on the 10th of February that the mission was finally ready to go underway. The submarines, I-400 and I-401 were set to undertake a treacherous journey that would see them crawl though thousands of miles of first Soviet and then Anglo-American dominated waters. Using their snorkels they could move whilst submerged, but at only six knots, ensuring almost certainly that the American invasion of the Kanto Plain would have begun by the time they had arrived at their target. Nonetheless they set sail, some hoping that Japan might hold out long enough for them to carry out the vengeance of the Japanese people, others praying that the war would end before they reached their destination, so that they might yet survive the suicide mission they had been assigned. The Kempetai officers on board loudly endorsed the former view, and beat out any sign of the latter. General Doihara was a strategic genius unmatched in the Imperial Army, or any armed forces for that matter, was the assurance that they relayed to the sceptical time and time again, it was impossible that he could be defeated so easily.

From dry land, Doihara might have ironically agreed as he and his newfound ally Umezu put together the final touches of their grand scheme. In comparison to Operation PX, the assassination of Korechika Anami would be very simple indeed.

The coalition of those willing to oust Anami from office covered a broad section of upper echelons of Japanese society and her military hierarchy. Since the late 19th century a form of ‘State’ Shinto had been actively promoted by the Japanese government only intensifying further with the coronation of Emperor Hirohito. The Japanese state declared the Emperor as a ‘Kami’ amongst men, a powerful spirit those worship had become national duty and though it would be incorrect to refer to this period of Japanese history as Theocracy, the Kannushi priests would become organs of state encouraged dogma and in turn grew in their influence on the state itself. Several of these had grown to despise Anami as the effective kidnapping of the Emperor spread across the higher levels of state institutions, first as a rumour, then as a poorly kept secret, whilst few openly protested, many were willing to facilitate any scheme that might remove the great blasphemer.

Members of the Imperial family, including even the most fanatical advocates of Japanese expansion such as Prince Yasuhiko Asaka also scorned Anami with silent outrage at his willingness to bring embarrassment on their dynasty, as well as the Imperial system that had elevated Japan from a feudal embarrassment to a global power. These feelings were all the more exacerbated by the worried reports of some officers to claimed that Anami was preparing to remove the Imperial system altogether and bring about a regression to the pre-Meiji era, with himself as a monolithic Shogun ruling over the former Empire. Whilst there were some who scoffed at these claims members of the Imperial family took them very seriously indeed, the question whispered between Princes and Princesses was just exactly how much worse the Americans could be.

There had been Army officers willing to give Anami the benefit of the doubt, for an institution hopelessly insecure about its own role in Japanese society, it was very comforting to blame the defeats of the past on the Navy. Japan had been strong on Kyushu, and it did not take to a fanatic to believe that the Americans could be defeated, or at least bled by a thousand cuts until American public opinion buckled. It was now clear that that strategy had failed, the armies that had conquered Manchuria and defeated the Chinese time and time again had not been able to hold back the tide of American firepower, gas, and Atomic Bombs. Comparably few were readily confident about Japan’s ability to do anything more than delay an American advance into the Kanto Plain and wished to cease the conflict before more Japanese civilians reaped what their leaders had sown. Others were provisionally willing to fight on to the end but feared that the use of biological weapons against the Japanese would only entail an American response that would surely be far worse than anything Operation PX might inflict. Some were willing to commit national suicide in fighting off liberal capitalism, where the Japanese people, or a people similar to the Japanese who had inherited their history, might rise from the ashes to exploit western complacency, but with the high possibility that the Soviet Union, and their anathematic Socialism, might occupy and infect Japanese society, they were willing to consider an American occupation as the lesser evil.

Complementing this network of opposition were Doihara’s own officers who in conducting appalling crimes together had fused themselves to the superior who had kept them sane by assuring them of their virtuous patriotism and the necessity of their deeds. These were men who would die for their General and would carry out any task he requested of them because they believed that he would do the same for him, the fact that they would be rescuing the Emperor from the clutches of a seditious demagogue only emboldened their belief in their mission. Others had become heavily addicted to Opium as they had aided its spread across China and now relied on Doihara’s illicit contacts with the Opium underworld that would keep them supplied with enough to chase their individual dragons. Whilst the Priests, the Royals and the Officers would all be vital in ensuring the installation of a new regime under Doihara, it would be these men who would form the handle of the knife that would be forced and twisted into Anami’s back.

On February 12th, with confirmation that Operation PX was underway, and in mind of the increasingly narrow window of time to contact the foreign diplomats preparing to leave Tokyo, it was agreed between Doihara and Umezu and they could not wait any longer.They had been warned of what had happened when German officers had attempted to remove Hitler in a similar fashion that he now planned for General Anami, that despite careful planning over months if not years their former ally had survived absent his trousers. The architect of this ‘Counter-Coup’ was not blind to these concerns, he did however have his own suspicions as to where their spiritual German brethren had failed.

Though the late Reich’s Propaganda Ministry had been vague on the details of the attempted assassination it had been revealed that the bomb had been detonated in a shed in a light, quite possibly wooden building. Though the Germans had attempted to explain the Fuhrer’s survival as divine providence of some sort or the other it made far more sense that the structure wasn’t strong enough to contain a blast powerful enough to kill anyone other than those directly in the face of it. Here the bomb would detonate inside the depths of the Matsushiro Underground Imperial Headquarters were the blast would have nowhere to go other than to incinerate its target.

Unlike the target of the German plotters, it was far more reliable to know exactly where the General would be. Korechika Anami was, by his very nature, militaristic, with a regime of determined activities which could be worked around with little room for error. Breakfast, archery, briefings from the fronts, further meetings, and then office work in his private quarters before rest. Though these quarters were guarded, Doihara’s own soldiers had found it easy enough to be placed on a rota in which they could be left to themselves without the bother of either the General or other guards, enough time to place the explosives destroy the Anami regime from the inside. Timed to when Anami retired, it would all be over in one night.

Umezu was less concerned with the death of Anami himself but rather with what would come afterwards. Even with the Prime Minister gone he had woven a structure of loyalists around himself that would survive to see the morning in at least some parts of the nation, giving rise to an individual perhaps even more fanatical who would execute the plotters before driving Japan down an even more suicidal path. However Doihara’s 1st General Army was now the largest military force left in Japan and though even it would have been considered woefully weak merely two years beforehand it could nonetheless crush any other formation that might come to arrest its commander. To bolster military force, political and cultural leaders would soon rally around both Doihara and Umezu in the wake of Anami’s death, neutralising any serious opposition to the new Government, in an eerily similar fashion to the events of August 14th.

It was all too good to be true.

Doihara had in fact been too clever by half in mobilising so many figures together, for as they chattered against Anami, the also found an forum for their doubts, ones which would often only exacerbate said doubts into suspicion. It is still not known whether this was the cause, if someone informed an Anami loyalist to the plot after discovering Doihara’s true intentions he has never revealed himself, though as Anami was practicing his archery he found himself being informed of the bomb at had been placed in his office, and that two guards were in custody, suspected of involvement in its planting.

Unfortunately for the General they were not the only men on Doihara’s staff, as one overly paranoid guard revealed as he shot Anami in the back, twice, as he had given an order to secure the facility. In a panicked hail of gunfire the makeshift assassin was cut down, as others rushed to the wheezing, heavily bleeding, General.

News of the bomb did not come to the telephone of Doiahara’s headquarters, but the shooting had, and with several hours before the planned events were supposed to go into motion, the would-be Prime Minister decided to that even now events were too far gone. If Anami was dead then he would have a far better chance of still succeeding in his coup, if not, he could always assure his demise by the guns the General had granted him and those of their mutual enemies. Under the pretence of sighted American landing craft, the large defensive army was mobilised.

The Swiss Legation, patiently filing down to their bunker with the rest of Tokyo’s remaining civilian population also found themselves drafted, as they were driven to Doihara’s Headquarters. As night fell, they had already managed to achieve contact with Douglas Mac Arthur on Kyushu.

General Douglas MacArthur had considered whether it might make a good photo opportunity for him to be pictured striding onto the beaches of Kyushu as he had done in the Philippines, not returning this time but swaggering onto Japanese turf itself to underline the climax to the conflict that Operation Downfall would inevitably bring. He had been informed that the Kamikaze threat was simply too great for him to spend too much time on the beaches and was instead huddled towards less exposed ground into a tragically unceremonious fashion.

By the time he had arrived the island of once subtropical beauty was already an ashen ruin, a state which only worsened, and worsened still. Out of all the horrors that the Second World War had provided, Kyushu was a dark masterpiece. From both Japanese and American combined, the island had seen the equivalent power of 150,000 tonnes of TNT used upon it, flattening cities and leaving the infrastructure wrecked and decaying. Even then the Japanese had continued to fight, going through horrific conditions to delay the American advance as long as possible, surviving on the dwindling supplies of food and water available.

To ensure the battle would be over before the rainy season, the Americans had turned to the one weapon still unused in their arsenal, gassing much of what was left of Japanese held territory in the south, breaking the back of what was left of the defence, and leaving few alive. Now the Japanese lay silent, the portions of gas that the US had left unoccupied that formed a vast no-man’s land and without railway lines or proper roads the Japanese could not probably re-occupy it even if they had had the fuel necessary. The only recognition that they were still fighting for Kyushu was the two individual Kamikazes that had appeared on the horizon, both of whom being destroyed in the air by P-80 jets that swept down upon, far from any worthwhile target. A significant Japanese counter-attack on Kyushu was not considered to be a serious possibility but nonetheless tensions on the island remained high, with the knowledge that soon they would have to land on another island, and experience the same horrors yet again.

From the ruins and barely usable port facilities of Ariake Bay, General Douglas MacArthur, Commander in Chief of U.S. Army Forces Pacific, had been deeply focused on the vast construction and reinforcement efforts now going on in the southern third of Kyushu. The plan had been to build eleven vast airfields and American engineers were now working to ensure they would be ready in time for the more than thirty air groups that would be assembled to cover Operation [i]Coronet[/i], the invasion of the Kanto Plain, and hopefully the end of the entire mess

Mac Arthur had confidently predicted that the casualty estimates for the invasion Kyushu had been overblown by those fearful or ignorant of large scale combat operations, he had assured his troops of such and had sent them off eagerly to face the numerous divisions and Kamikazes that Operation [i]Majestic[/i] had never accounted for. They had fought heroically, but the price had been nightmarish, over 120,000 Americans dead and over 350,000 wounded, with the majority being unable to return for combat. The detractor’s had not called for his head, but for Truman’s though he feared it would only be too long before they were both being put on trial by the grieving parents and wives of America. [i]Coronet[/i] was not projected to be as bad as Kyushu, already there were fresh American troops arriving from Europe, to bolster his force into 22 divisions. Alongside him would be the Commonwealth Corps, with the Australians, British, and Canadians each contributing one division. Mac Arthur had been hesitant to use them in favour of American troops, but the appalling casualties had settled the matter, he would need every Pacific veteran he could muster. Intelligence stated that the Japanese would be heavily outnumbered, and would lack the mass of Kamikazes that had been used so devastatingly on the American invasion fleet but he was nonetheless cautious of proceeding. Intelligence had also been blind of the speed with which the Japanese had amassed forces on Kyushu, if they were wrong again he would be sending both his boys and the British into another bloodbath. It had been estimated that it would all be over by early May, but if the same casualty rates applies that would still mean tens of thousands more Americans dead and countless more wounded, with even more casualties down the line if the Japanese people, heavily concentrated in the area, chose to join their armies in fighting to the last. And what if the Japanese didn’t surrender when the Kanto Plain was occupied? Then there would be an even longer period of combat as northern and western Japan was conquered with further unknown quantities of casualties.

Japan might never surrender, it was not an appealing prospect, but having fought them for over five years he knew it was one that could be incredibly likely. It was this knowledge that ensured that, when he received Kenjii Doihara’s urgent message, the famously grandiloquent general was left speechless.

Though in his brutal reign over Manchuria he had found it useful to learn several dialects of Chinese and some Russian, Doihara could not speak English. The message he would thus send Mac Arthur had had to be written for him as he dictated and read over the radio to Mac Arthur by a member of the Swiss delegation officially acting as intermediaries in the rather bizarre conditions of Japan’s second attempt at surrender.

From Peter Probst’s polite but direct voice, betraying a Swiss accent even over the static, the offer was read out twice. Though without much of the emotion that might have been intended to accompany the document, the weight of its words bore down heavily on MacArthur nonetheless, as the statement was slowly orated.

”Before we proceed to other matters, I will first reveal the facts that are most likely not known to the United States of America. It is in good faith that I, General Kenjii Doihara, commander of the First General Army, speaking through an intermediary, reveal them to you, in the hope to create a basis of trust, and to underline the magnitude of the present situation.

On August 15th, 1945, Emperor Shōwa was kindnapped by a number of fanatical military officers with the backing of War Minister General Korechika Anami. Anami subsequently installed himself as Prime Minister with the Emperor as his Prisoner and has ruled through a reign of terror, crushing anyone who would offer surrender.

On February 10th, 1946, two submarines set sail from the port of Niigata. They are large enough to carry floatplanes that can bomb the western coast of the United States similar to our raids against the Pacific Northwest in 1942. How these missions differ is that whilst those bombers only carried incendiaries, the Submarines currently making their way towards the United States are armed with Bubonic Plague, Cholera, and other pathogens. When I was stationed in China we were forced to examine the work of the men who produced these viruses, if their effects are as nightmarish as they were upon the Chinese citizenry, I fear we may unleash upon your nation a horrible trauma that might last decades after this war has ended. Both are moving towards San Francisco, you must move all possible Naval forces to prevent their attacks in the event we cannot recall them.

On February 12th, 1946 a coalition of individuals from all aspects of Japanese society acted on their unwillingness to see genocide in retaliation against the Japanese people provoked by the insanity of one man and his ego. Whether we originally agreed with the war against America or not we now find ourselves able to stare into the reality we face if the struggle continues, only to find that it is an abyss. Anami has subsequently been killed, soon to be replaced by a joint government of both myself and Yoshijirō Umezu with the sole aim on a peace that can be agreeable to the United States but also that ensures the survival of the Japanese nation. To further this aim we offer complete disarmament and cooperation with an American occupation authority on the basis that:

1)              The Emperor will not be forced into abdication or tried for war crimes. Whilst we acknowledge there are some aspects of Japanese society which may need to be altered for the post-war era, the Japanese people cannot continue without their Emperor for he is as integral to our society as our lands and oceans. To surrender without this assurance might as well be welcoming our genocide.

2)              The Soviet Union be removed from Hokkaido and prevented from occupying any further Japanese territory. We can trust the United States to operate in a manner which is respectful of human rights, we cannot in good conscience trust the Bolsheviks in the same manner, nor will we leave our people under them to find out for themselves.

3)              That in recognition for our services, myself and a small party of others be allowed to leave Japan in exile, with the understanding that we were misled by deluded patriots in our actions before this incident, and that in its wake we be absolved of those same actions

As this message is relayed several events are in motion, events which could decide whether or not I will be leading the next Japanese government, or a man even more fanatical than Anami. Awaiting your response I urge you to consider the one factor that must matter most to any good general. I refer, of course, to the lives of your men. Both you and I realise that my forces will be defeated when you land on the Kanto Plain in the coming weeks. The question is how many more of your men might I take with me General? We have been defeated on Kyushu, but only at great loss and suffering to both sides, the same shall occur on Honshu if you do not make the historic decision, and join me in ending this bloodshed before it reaches its crescendo. For though I have warned you about the Submarines headed for San Francisco, and can assure you that not further raids would take place, I cannot make the same assurance about further biological and chemical attacks.

Time is of the essence General, choose now to end this madness, or forever live in the knowledge that you could have saved tens of thousands of American lives but ultimately chose to send them to their deaths for the egos of our governments!”

Despite Mac Arthur’s reputation for often responding to requests with extravagant soliloquy, his response to Doihara was unusually direct and business-like. He plainly stated that both Doihara’s first and last terms where in contradiction to the Potsdam declaration, where it had been stated that war criminals would not escape justice and that the Allies would reserve the right to build a democratic Japanese state with or without the Emperor. He added that though the Soviet Union were not a signatory, they were now an allied power against the Japanese and that this had to be taken into consideration in the wake of a Japanese surrender. It was harsh condemnation of every demand Doihara had made, but MacArthur did not explicitly refuse, instead indicating that he would give a second reply within the next few hours.

Was Mac Arthur willing to accept? The general historical consensus is that he was at least considering Doihara’s offer expressed by his willingness to not immediately reject the insurgent general. However whether he was simply taking time to consider his options, or planned to accept will always be unknown. Within hours of Doihara’s broadcast was apparently ready to reply in some form, but Doihara was no longer there.

Matome Ugaki, the Admiral without a Navy, had been a fervent advocate of the PX plan, believing it to be a means of the Navy redeeming itself in the wake of the last three years failures. As Umezu had repeated time and time again his opposition to the planned attack, he had grown suspicious that the General might go to extreme lengths to halt the mission. As the news of the shooting came to the Supreme War Council, Umezu had proclaimed that he would take over considering his role as Chief of the Army General Staff, he would take Anami’s place, and that until the General had recovered he would suspend all planned operations, an order that would include recalling the two submarines headed for San Francisco. Overcome with rage , Ugaki openly accused Umezu of being behind the attempt on Anami’s life with the intention of cowardly surrendering to the Americans, the only other member of the Supreme War Council present, Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka also joined in the condemnation of Umezu’s apparent opportunism, devolving into a virulent argument that had to see Umezu separated from the other two men. Thus, whilst Doihara had proceeded to contact Mac Arthur on the basis had Umezu was in control in Matsushiro, all power still hinged on the unconscious man with a bullet lodged in his spine.

As the hours passed it was determined that Anami would indeed live but that he might never walk again, and that he would need rest for the next few days. The news was a relief to his supporters, and damning to Umezu as he paced impatiently waiting to hear from the outside world, when he finally did he found himself being ordered to put his hands on his head. Doihara’s offer to Mac Arthur had leaked to Matsushiro, and his mention of Umezu was terminally damning for both of them. Individuals who had not been involved in the coup had seen the Swiss delegation drive to his headquarters and had reported their findings to Lieutenant General Toshimichi Uemura, head of the 36th Army based in Tokyo and normally under Doihara’s command. As he neared Doihara’s headquarters he found himself being blocked from entering the compound by subordinate officers, as he pressed the issue he was threatened with arrest if he did not leave, he chose to comply, now sworn to investigate further. The revelation that Doihara had been in contact with and entertained several individuals over the past months, gained from his staff operating inside Tokyo, and that he was apparently with the Swiss now. With the news of the attempt on Anami’s life now coming through, Doihara’s intentions had become all too clear. As he was busy berating the junior officer who had so aggressively turned Uemura away, an out of breath guard replied that the Lieutenant General had returned, now approaching with the tanks of the First Armoured Regiment.

Facing arrest, or potentially execution on the spot, Doihara chose to flee into the night with several co-conspirators, abandoning the Swiss delegation and any potential contact with MacArthur. With his troops driving the Swiss back into Tokyo, and the remaining staff of the Headquarters under arrest, the transcript of Doihara’s offer had been found, and was relayed back to Matsushiro where Umezu found himself also under arrest.

The attempted coup had collapsed before MacArthur had been able to answer, and Doihara could now only hope that the regime he had shaken would fall to American or Soviet guns, before he was captured, where he was sure a far less glorious death was assured for him.

East By Far East - The Soviet mission to Vietnam and the beginning of the Thai-Indochinese War

By early February, the mass use of chemical weapons in Operation Sandman, the formulation of the Japanese response, and the coup that had resulted from that apocalyptic situation had created a deeply ironic situation. Though these events had been entirely motivated by events emanating from South East Asia, in their wake Japanese and western focus had largely shifted back to events on the Japanese home islands. For the Soviet Union, this was an insatiable opportunity to further extend their revolutionary influence.

It had become increasingly clear in early 1946 that the allies were not going to directly invade Indochina, a fact confirmed by the American invasion of Kyushu. Due to this fact, the Japanese had already had contingency plans to move their sizable force into southern China before October 1945, where the struggle with the Kuomintang and the Communists was seen as far more important than holding an area which had become useless with the demise of the Japanese navy, as such the deal with the Viet Minh should not be seen in the context of a forced retreat, despite what scholars of the Communist Party of the Vietnam continue to argue.

Why had it taken the Japanese so long to enact these plans? Though the answer may partly lie in the fact that the increasingly desperate situation to the north, west, and east made the continued occupation of Indochina increasingly pointless, it was the constant frustration by Allied air and naval power that had made such an impossible task to accomplish in the past. Now however, the vast majority of allied air assets had been focused on the approaching invasion of Kyushu, and the Japanese commanders finally had the confidence to retreat out of Indochina with minimal harassment from the skies and sea. For the last time in history, vast numbers of Japanese troops marched north into southern China, an advance still plagued by a lack of fuel but one that passed by largely free of aerial attacks.

As the Japanese had retreated the various peoples of Indochina had already been preparing for the post-Japanese situation. Whilst the Japanese had been unable to find any prominent figures in Vietnamese society to establish a pro-Japanese regime, they had made far more progress in the western area of Kampuchea. The former French protectorate had only had a tiny garrison of Japanese troops during their occupation, and had managed to escape many of the brutalities they had exacted upon other occupied areas, local anger had mainly been directed at the Thai, who had annexed large portions of the protectorates former area with Japanese backing, and the Vichy regime, which had continued to suppress any nationalist protests. Like Vietnam, Kampuchea had had an established royal family by the time the Japanese had removed French control and thus Norodom Sihanouk, heir to the throne, had proclaimed himself King of the nominally independent state in March. Son Ngoc Thanh, a prominent and radical Cambodian nationalist had been forced to flee to Japan after being hunted by the Vichy authorities for his role in organising anti-French protests in early 1942, now almost three years later he had returned to help lead his nation as Foreign Minister, even if the privilege also involved being a Japanese satellite.

Though collaborationist, the government enjoyed a honeymoon of popularity with the Cambodian people, particularly due to their aggressive reversals of the stillborn French attempt to Romanise the Cambodian language. A return to the universally popular Khmer script granted the new regime a popular legitimacy that most other supposedly independent nations of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Despite this populist success, not all were pleased with a conservative regime which was in essence a puppet of the Japanese, and as the war grew worse for their Japanese ally, so the Kampuchean regime grew more vulnerable to criticism by both nationalists and communists, both of whom having formed an uneasy alliance of opposition around the militant Buddhist Monk, Son Ngoc Minh. Minh admired Thanh, the Monks name being combination of both his and another hero, Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Viet Minh. However this admiration did not prevent him urging action against the government Thanh was a part of, and inspired by the news of the new American superbomb, he had instructed a group of young nationalists had broken into the Imperial Palace to demand the abdication of the King and the resignation of his government. Though swiftly put down, the coup shed a light on the need for the regime to prove it could be assertive as well as populist. Thanh became Prime Minister and set about a more ardently nationalist agenda, and ass the few Japanese troops retreated north for their last stand in southern China, this was finally enabled to put it into place, as the King and Thanh found themselves enjoying a true independence. Japanese defeat on the mainland was now seemingly inevitable, yet there was still no indication of the feared return to French control either by French or American occupation, at least not for the moment. The King was unsettled by the vacuum, claiming he felt as if he were in the eye of the world’s most violent storm. Thanh did not disagree, but in the eye of the storm the skies were clear, and through that clarity, opportunity arose.

Thus, despite having declared Japan as the “liberator of the Asian peoples” only months beforehand, the King declared his government would remove Kampuchea from the Co-Prosperity Sphere whilst also asking for a peace with the Allied powers. From outside of the Palace protestors gathered only to be pleasantly surprised by their Prime Minister and their King joining them at the head, proclaiming Cambodia’s current independence, and demanding the end of French imperial delusions. A reply was not given from any Allied power however, only the French had any significant experience in the area, and with their inability to project any real power into the Asian interior, their response remained dubious. What little forces the Cambodians had at their disposal where ready to fight against the French for their independence, but instead found themselves directed at the Thai’s to their west, out of fear that at any moment the new nationalist regime of Pridi Banomyong might take advantage of the fluctuating situation and advance east.

Having liberated themselves from Japanese control, the Free Thai Army were indeed now on the move, free from the constrains of the Japanese and the French, and with the Allies focused on a far greater enemy, the time was ripe for the pursuit of the age old aspiration that Pridi had shared with his fascist predecessor. For if the French were to dither on reclaiming their former Empire in the South East Asia, the unification of all Tai peoples was surely now a dream whose time had come.

Ever since the nation’s occupation in 1893, to the Japanese removal of the French in 1945, the small country of Laos had always seemed to slip under the radar. From its rugged terrain and dispersed population, the French saw far less potential for the area as the rest of Indochina, and though granting the territory independence was never seriously considered, governing Laos had always proven to be more expensive than anything that might have been exploited from the land or its people despite the early promises of vast wealth from early explorers such as Henri Mouhout. Laos was left underdeveloped and often self-governing, especially for those peoples such as the Lao Soung who lived in the Laotian highlands. With no major railway lines or roads to connect it to more active areas of French control, it would never experience the attempts at assimilation that often exemplified the French colonial expression, with French speaking rates lower than in any other part of Indochina.

Though Social Darwinist beliefs had motivated the French colonial administrators to view the Laotians as a lazy and decadent people who were entirely to blame for their own lack of economic development, relations between individual French and Laotians were strong, with many Frenchmen finding a great deal of attraction towards the peoples way of life. Whilst development and French population was lower than in any part of Indochina, the occurrences of French colonists ‘going native’ in the area were very common. This had led to a strong bond between the civilisations despite the official French administrations apathy and scepticism towards the region, one that would create a particularly complex situation as the Japanese removed the French colonial authority in March 1945.

Unlike in Cambodia or Vietnam, the Japanese had had to arrest and imprison the King of the former French Protectorate, Sisavang Vong, alongside French officials in March. The declaration of Laotian independence being forced at gunpoint. As many French soldiers and civilians had disappeared into the mountains that made up much of Laos to wage a guerrilla resistance many Laotions joined them in reaction the Japanese move that had ironically been designed to garner support for Japan amongst the population. Though the collaborationist government of Prince Phetsarath Ratanavongsa, head of the [i]Lao Issara[/i] or ‘Free Laos’ nationalist movement did have some support for its agenda of Laotian independence in urban areas, the majority of the population was rural or highland dwelling, and generally stood with the King, and the resistance led by his son, Prince Sisavang Vatthana, in returning to at least some sort of renewed union with the French. By November the few Japanese in the area found themselves suffering high casualties, and soon found themselves moving northwards with the rest of the Japanese forces in Indochina. The Japanese had seen little economic potential in Laos, and had moved to actively worsen the areas connection with the rest of Indochina, having cut the cable cars than ran between Laos and Vietnam. Unwilling and unwanted, exiting the area was a task most Japanese took with relish. The Ratanavongsa government, was left struggling to defend itself from those guerrilla that now switched their targets from the Japanese to their former collaborators.

As attempts to bolster the governments legitimacy by constructing a Laotian army feel under financial and moral constraints, with the ‘Royal Army’ of Lao Issara members only having established a few half-empty camps of urban labourers. Ratanavongsa aimed at circumventing the vulnerability of his regime with an army only in training by attempting to enlist the help of Ho Chi Minh’s far stronger Viet Minh forces to protect his government’s hold of the nation, or at least its towns and cities. Ho was wary of any major actions that might impact future negotiations with the allies however, and remained wary of the Chinese to his north, the former collaborationist regime was alone, and fragile. These were facts that had not escaped Laos’ neighbours to her west.

That long standing reason for Laotian fondness for the French soon became readily apparent. As Bofors and Krupp mountain guns pounded from the hills and their tanks and cavalry advanced from three pincers. The soldiers of the Free Thai Army still had the words of their leader Pridi, the national saviour, ringing in their ears. Of the historic duty to unify all peoples of common ancestry, and their global mission as humans to rid Asia of the stains of Japanese occupation that Thailand herself had recently cleansed. Divided and weak, Laos would be the first stepping stone towards the unification of the Tai, and now no-one in Paris could stop them.

In the late January of 1946, as all of the world had watched with horror at the joint escalations of the civilian massacres in Indonesia and Operation [i]Sandman[/i] on Kyushu, a particularly rusted and dirt coated trawler pulled into Saigon. A year beforehand American bombers had devastated the harbour, destroying thousands of tons of shipping. Though the Japanese had attempted to make repairs to the harbour that had become increasingly important to their operations in the area, these had been disrupted by their formal takeover of Indochina in March, and were still not complete by the time of their evacuation in October and November. Nonetheless for this one, small solitary ship a wrecked harbour could still prove accommodating, and indeed, advantageous, for the essence of her cargo was such that would be convenient for the Western Allied powers to take little notice.

The anonymous Mr Lin-tay might have seen somewhat annoyed by this entrance to the city after his long journey across Eurasia. A far more comfortable ship had taken from Burma to Liverpool after all, nothing but first class for the wealthy Chinese businessman who had had the means to journey from his native China to Zurich to treat his tuberculosis. He might have complained of the rough conditions he was forced to endure on his ocean voyage, had his disguise still had meaning. However amongst the men he was with now there was little point in continuing the pretence with which he had endeared himself to the peoples of Great Britain and Switzerland who had been such amicable hosts and enablers in his vast voyage. For now he could once again be comfortable in the fact that he was Dr. Pham Ngoc Thach, not a sufferer of Tuberculosis, but a specialist in its treatment. Not a humble businessman, but the first ambassador of the People’s Republic of Vietnam.

Like Ho Chi Minh himself he had spent a great deal of time in France before he had become instrumental in the takeover of power in the city of Saigon, his true home, from the defeated Japanese, his mission had been to return with the aim of re-establishing contact with the leadership of the PCF, the French Communist Party, now the largest party within the chamber of deputies within the young Fourth Republic. After spending several pleasant weeks amongst his Swiss friends, he had snuck across the border into France whilst Ho had established the new regime back home. With the Alps still to their backs he had met with Maurice Thorez and Jacques Duclos, the two men he hoped might prove decisive in ensuring that the French would not return to Indochina after the inevitable Japanese defeat. By providing evidence that French civilians and soldiers were being well treated, despite still being interned, he also aimed to contrast the Vietnamese from the increasingly murderous measures the Japanese had been taking against other European prisoners under their control.

For their own part Thorez and Duclos were wary of any commitment. The leading role the Communist Party had played in the French resistance, alongside the Soviet Union’s as having defeated the Nazi menace almost singlehandedly, had gained the party a great deal of popular support in the wake of the liberation. Nonetheless the election that had taken place only a few weeks before they had met the Vietnamese Doctor had shown that said support was not yet enough to lead France on their own, and despite winning a plurality of seats, they had been forced into coalition with the two other major French parties, the Socialists and the Christian Democrats. All three despised each, yet they were unified in their fear of the demagogic Charles De Gaulle, whom they privately feared would exploit his popularity amongst the people to establish a military junta if the three proved unable to hang together. In support of Vietnam the Communist Party knew that they would split the Socialists and gain almost universal opposition from the Christian Democrats, in all likelihood there was no means at present for which they could legislate for Indochinese independence. Even if they could, there was no guarantee that De Gaulle would not exploit this as the casus belli for which to launch a coup and ban the Communist Party altogether. They could offer Vietnam moral support, but until the young Republic stabilised itself, or the opportunity arose for a full Communist takeover of France, the potential pitfalls were too great to offer any legislative commitment.

They were however willing to introduce the Doctor to the Soviet envoy in Paris, who managed to arrange a journey to Moscow to speak directly to the Soviet Politburo of his mission. Throughout war torn Europe he had travelled, into the frozen tundra that had halted the Wehrmacht, and into the Kremlin itself where he met an atmosphere far colder than the snow outside. The Soviet premier wished to know why the Vietnamese regime had seemingly chosen to disband the Indochinese Communist Party in favour of their own nationalistic concerns, and if they were in face just another Japanese puppet state yet to fall as some Soviet reports had indicated. Pham chose to emphasise the present situation rather than attempt to defend against these accusations, wary of meeting a similar fate that several other unofficial foreign delegations had met at the hands of Stalin. He declared that whilst Cambodia and Laos were indeed Japanese puppet regimes, there was little they could do to spread the revolution there without indirectly aiding the Thai, a far more ominous threat to socialism in Indochina. All the while he reminded Stalin that the Japanese who had retreated from Indochina had met a similar fate to their other comrades in China, and had fallen to the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai Sek, who still proclaimed his right to occupy Indochina after the war was over. This had been exacerbated by French and Japanese mismanagement of agriculture which had left Vietnam on the brink of starvation, a fact that Pham did not have to exaggerate, with several regions only beginning to recover after their rice crops had been returned from Japanese control. This was yet another matter that had required greater attention than affairs to the north or the west. He nonetheless asserted that, with Soviet support to augment their existing Japanese arsenals Pham assured the Soviet premier that the Vietnamese would be in a position to not only hold off Chiang or the Pridi regime in Thailand, but would also be in a position to spread the revolution to those areas when the chance arose.

With all the relief of a man expecting to be purged at any moment, Pham had reacted to Stalin’s non-committal stance with incredible enthusiasm. He would be sent back to Vietnam covertly whilst the Soviets would send an envoy alongside him to further discuss the Vietnamese situation. Phom would return to Saigon without any concrete assurances, but in the knowledge that both the French Communists and the Soviets knew that an independent Vietnam was a reality and they had not reacted to the prospect with the hostility some in the new Vietnamese leadership had feared. In contrast to the intense patriotic whirlwind of tri-colours he had seen in France, the streets of Saigon were now completely devoid of Red, White, and Blue in the wake of an aggressive effort of removing any indication that the French, or the Japanese, for that matter might have ever ruled Vietnam. The old man the Soviets had sent to meet the new Vietnamese leadership seemed to know more Japanese than French, but he nonetheless spoke the latter with a good deal of authority. As he had met with Ho Chi Minh he had been just as non-committal as Stalin had been despite general pleasantries but his importance was far greater than anything he might yet offer diplomatically. For Ho knew that the Americans were surely watching his movements, and whilst the French and the Soviets might have been cool in their response, he was sure the OSS report of this news would make for some interesting reactions in Washington.

Collapse: The End of the Showa Era

The reaction of President Truman to the news of Kenjii Doihara’s supposed coup has been an issue that is often linked in with that of his decision to abandon his predecessor’s determination to prevent the use of Chemical Weapons. It is true that perhaps in some sense he did feel personally responsible for bringing about the development’s that the United States may never have been aware of had it not been for Doihara, however the accusations that he dithered in response, or chose to soften the US approach towards Japan out of some lingering sense of guilt, are shown to be fiction by any detailed reading of his decisions made in the wake of the revelations that reached Washington on the morning of the 16th of February, 1946.

Though across the Pacific the opportunistic coup had collapsed hours beforehand, President Truman responded to the information he had received with an energy that matched that of the Japanese General currently fleeing an embarrassed and vengeful Kempetai, choosing to personally call the drowsy head of the Naval Staff of the San Francisco Harbour Defence Command Post under the aged concrete structure of Fort Scott to demand he mobilise all available resources at his disposal as soon as possible, when Truman was informed that this was not much the angered President berated the Commander for his lack of urgency and disclosed fully the nature of the threat that might be headed towards the city.

Unfortunately for the President, the issue was indeed one of scarcity rather than sloth. This had not always been the case, the fact that San Francisco Bay Area shipbuilders were so significant to the United States war effort, having produced almost 45 percent of all the cargo shipping tonnage and 20 percent of warship tonnage built in the entire country during the war. The threat of further aerial Japanese attacks in the wake of Pearl Harbour had led to a radical build-up of the ports coastal and sea defences, the vast landscape around the iconic Golden Gate bridge being dotted with literally hundreds of mobile antiaircraft guns, searchlights and radars. Across the inner harbor and anti-submarine net extending from the Marina in San Francisco to Sausalito in Marin had been cast, with the Navy in full control of those ships allowed to enter and leave. Soldiers assigned to the fortifications and observation stations dug vast trenches on the hillsides near their batteries, even constructing underground quarters from inside the hillsides. Camouflage paint covered every battery and barrack, with those objects too large to paint being covered in large camouflage nets. From the skies predatory Airships had hung in wait for their expected prey with depth charges as they had patrolled offshore waters.

Akin to much of the rest of the American war effort, it was an effort of truly staggering proportions, yet one that had been for nought for the vast arsenal would only ever fire in practice, and the airships only victims would be the occasional unfortunate whale. As the American role in the war intensified across both shining seas, and the threat of major Japanese aerial attack gradually receded, the large array of defences and her rather bored operators had been dismantled and sent to areas of greater need ever since the beginning of 1944. As the Golden Gate’s vista had gradually become less militarised, some would joke that the frail lookout air raid had been one of the best Japanese moves of the war by locking down this force for so long, little did the citizens of San Francisco know, there was now very little to joke about.

Though San Francisco’s defences could be restored to their previous might, this was a process that would take several weeks, whilst recalling several of the Destroyers based in the Pacific to form a defensive perimeter around the city would also take over a fortnight. Without knowledge of the Japanese forces whereabouts this might have been too late to intercept the Submarines before their attack. Truman, who just a day beforehand had been busying himself with how to respond to the continuing Thai advance into Indochina, now found himself facing a major disaster on the American continent.

The ultimate decision not to evacuate San Francisco in these circumstances has provoked condemnation from those on the West Coast for many years however in this regard Truman must be forgiven. Lacking foresight in what was to come, the President was more concerned with mass panic if he did indeed reveal the situation to the cities peoples, not to mention the strategic loss that an empty San Francisco would represent with ships undergoing repair being left abandoned at such a crucial moment before Operation [i]Coronet[/i].

The city, for a time, remained calm, as troops slowly began to return to previously abandoned defensive positions on the basis of ‘exercises’, the city continued to busy itself with the winning of a war now seemingly close to completion, blind to the threat that now silently approached.

Though the revelation of the planned attack on San Francisco dominated the attention of the Truman administration, it was not the only article of interest within Doihara’s offer. It was this fact that gave the Anami regime the greatest concern, for from the mountains outside of Nagano, Japan’s deepest secret, the Matsushiro Imperial Headquarters, now lay exposed.

The enormous subterranean system of tunnels below the several mountains in Matsushiro had begun construction in November 1944 and had been planned to be a final fortress for the Japanese government and military command after the inevitable invasion by American forces. Under horrific conditions tens of thousands of Korean slave labourers had struggled to complete the complex as quickly as possible, at the cost of over a thousand dead they dead completed around 90% of the facilities were prepared on the night of Anami’s coup. The headquarters had been designed to withstand conventional raids from B-29 bombers, without knowledge of the Atomic Bomb, however now it seemed to be the only place capable of surviving one, subsequently relocation of the Emperor now took place despite ongoing construction.

By February 1946 the Headquarters was now very much the heart of Japan, housing the broadcasting facilities, communications, state apparatus, war command, the Supreme War Council, the Emperor, and Japan’s Atomic research project. With some tunnels measuring 5850 metres, the complex was able to accommodate every aspect of the Japanese war effort, it had seemed rational to move all organisation to the one, safe, area. For several months the heads of the Japanese government had observed the war efforts continued deterioration from underneath the mountains, blissfully going about their business in the knowledge that the sky would not come falling down on their heads. Now, like so many millions of Japanese, they lay exposed, waiting for the inevitable.

The decision to evacuate was an obvious one, though in his usual fashion the leader of Japan, now paralysed, refused to admit as much. Nonetheless, with American observation aircraft becoming an increasingly common sight in the skies across the area, the Prime Minister deemed it necessary that he be the man to replace the treacherous Doihara as head of the First General Army. Despite conspiracy theories to the contrary Anami’s motivations for this action were likely two-fold. The General, despite his growing irrationality in the field of strategic affairs, remained a competent administrator and tactician, in a normal situation he would have been a logical choice to head the defence of the Kanto Plain. This argument was made all the stronger by fears that Doihara, as part of a grander scheme, had somehow sabotaged the defence of the area alongside as a general feeling of dismay in that the Army had seemingly proven itself to be just as incompetent at dealing with the Americans as the Navy had been. Anami’s headstrong had carried him to the top of Japanese society and he now had no delusions that if there was anyone left to throw the Americans back into the ocean, it was himself. Whilst it was clear that the Japanese government would have to evacuate the area regardless, the General was adamant that he be present for the military evacuation before the rest of the Government and the Imperial Family left in stages for the mountainous city of Nikkō, officially to enable easier contact between the Prime Minister and his Council whilst the former despatched the Americans from the front.

Hence it would come to pass that Anami, loaded onto an Ambulance moving in a deliberately confused route west towards Tokyo, would pass directly underneath another payload. Dangling from the clouds as it was carried towards its target, it passed over the invisible white speck as it sat on the bomb bay of ‘Bock’s Car’, patiently waiting for its target to appear on the eastern horizon.

Though the events surrounding the attempted decapitation of the Japanese Government on the 20th of February have been used to demonstrate the advanced weaponry and unquestioned air superiority enjoyed by the United States at this point in the war, it can also be seen as underlining how desperate the American government had become to end the war for despite Japan’s far more hopeless situation, it was their seemingly dominant enemy who was beginning to run out of options.

The notion of dropping the Atomic Bomb on top of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo had been considered by the Manhattan Project’s ‘Target Committee’ in May 1945. The obvious argument,, that if you were to remove the Emperor and his Government then Japan, a hierarchical society that lacked a chain of succession similar to the United States, would collapse into anarchy had been put forward at the time. Nonetheless the option was seen as too risky, it was possible that they would simply be removing any civilian influence left in the Government to create a purely military one, which with the Emperor as its martyr would fight all the more fanatically. There was also the chance that even if Japanese society did fall apart in the wake of such a strike, it would only leave the US with a situation where they would be left to deal with a failed state, one likely filled with warlords and possible Communist insurgents. Tokyo was removed from the target list.

In the wake of the news of Anami’s coup, an enraged President Truman had once again considered the possibility of bombing Tokyo only for the idea to once again be shot down by cooler heads. Though a military Government had now been established without bombing Tokyo, the idea of martyring the Emperor was still far too risky to be attractive, even if invading the Home Islands now seemed unavoidable. The Manhattan Project’s targeting list had been whittled down further and further, as hundreds of thousands of Americans were killed or wounded in southern Kyushu. At a horrible cost the battle had been won but the Japanese government only seemed to grow more unflinching in their fight to the end it seemed entirely possible that even if and when Operation [i]Coronet[/i] was successful, the Japanese would continue fighting until all of Japan was occupied.

The hope that Anami and his militarists might be brought down by the more rational elements of Japanese society once it was clear that defeat was inevitable, a reality signified by the destruction of Japan’s forces on Kyushu, had also now vanished. The revelation that Anami had now survived a pacifist coup had made it clear that there would be no victory for sanity within the Japanese government. The path ahead for America was now seemingly a one way road to further destruction, with Coronet perhaps destroying the last significant Japanese forces left but not destroying the Japanese will to continue on, with civilian militia’s carrying any weapons they could find in lieu of proper armies. If such a scenario was now inevitable, it had now become clear that the potential to unravel any organisation the Japanese might have left was not a risky one at all.

Alongside the revelation of the attack upon San Francisco, the location of the Japanese government had also been revealed, and with the collective outrage of the Truman administration at this first piece of information, the slip in objective rationality necessary had been provided. It is possible that given time, calmer heads might have prevailed, however the likelihood that the Japanese government would also know that Doihara had sold them out and would soon be evacuating the area made it essential that the strike be carried out as quickly as possible. Furthermore, there would be no delay in bomb delivery as there had been in August 1945. The 509th Composite Group, alongside its humble but slowly increasing stockpile of Atomic Bombs had been relocated to Kyushu just over two hours away from Matsushiro, when the order did go through, there was little time to rescind it.

As had been a standard tactic since the loss of ‘Jabbet’, the designated Silverplate ‘Bock’s Car’ would not be flying alone but amongst two squadrons of fellow B-29’s, alongside 50 P-51 Mustang escorts. Though primarily motivated by the knowledge gained from Japanese prisoners that the sight of only one or two B-29’s would likely be perceived as an Atomic attack, this ‘camouflage’ was also designed as an answer to the theory that ‘Jabbet’ had been downed by Japanese fighters. If this had been the case, and the bountiful number of escorts did not succeed in preventing these new Japanese fighters, the dozens of potential targets would lower the odds of a successful enemy attack.

For almost two hours the small swarm encountered had encountered no disturbances as they flew over southern Honshu towards their target. From the beautiful winter sun, the cameramen and scientists on board the various B-29’s could faintly see the snow covered mountains glistening below. Had they not been blissfully unaware of the enemies capabilities, they might have known that they should have been looking upwards, as the heights of German and Japanese technology prepared to descend from the Heavens.

The air battle over Matsushiro is often pictured as a desperate, or even tragic, struggle. The battle has been portrayed in books, comics, film, and even art through Roy Liechtenstein’s controversial ‘Banzai’ which continues to take centre-stage in London’s Tate Modern gallery. Depending on their political persuasion, the individual might take the battle as the first sign of the true disintegration of the war from goal orientated combat to globalisation driven slaughter, others mark it as Japan’s last chance to save herself and others debate whether the outcome did in fact assure that.

The battle above the skies of Nagano in many ways presented the apex of Japanese technological achievements and that though Japanese developments in the defence of their skies were in a lock-step with the technological advancements of their enemies, Japan could nonetheless show herself to be a formidable opponent., made all the more dangerous by their willingness to die for the Emperor.

This rang especially true for those men on the covered airstrips several miles from the Matsushiro Imperial Headquarters, for months they had trained for the day that the Americans would come to destroy the Emperor and his Government. Though it had been hoped that should their secret come out there would be time to evacuate, they prepared themselves for combat in the knowledge that should time have ran out, that they would be the last line of defence.

It was in this knowledge that as American bombers and fighters flew over Kyushu almost completely undisturbed, the Anami government had carefully hoarded a small supply of Japan’s most advanced aircraft. The Kawasaki Ki-100, undoubtedly the finest Japanese fighter of the war, composed the vast majority of this force. Though it was slower than the more modern allied jets, it was more than a match for the P-51 Mustangs who escorted the bombers that it was designed to prey upon, with its impressive manoeuvrability giving it an edge against the American fighters, and its performance at its operational ceiling allowing it to be one of the few propeller planes in service that could be a genuine threat to the B-29 Bomber.

As Charles Sweeney flew the Silverplate bomber ever closer to Matsushiro, the force received confirmation that the Americans where headed for an area that they had no incentive to bomb otherwise, they scrambled. The 25 pilots led Lt. Col. Tadashi Ishikawa, were not the poorly trained suicide bombers that had received the minimal amount of training to become fireballs. These were men who had experience in attacking B-29’s and in claiming kills against the P-51, which the Ki-100 was thought to be able to easily outmanoeuvre. The only major skirmish at relative parity so far between the two aircraft had seen 12 Mustang’s shot down compared to two only two Japanese losses according to Japanese accounts of the battle, if this performance could be repeated then a 2:1 numerical disadvantage would be easily circumvented.

Alongside the height of Japanese advancement would come the last hurrah of their of Japan’s late German ally. The Mistibushi J8M, brother to the Me 163 Komet, was inferior to its German sibling, its fuel supply only allowing it a mere 4 minutes of flight. Nonetheless it had already proven itself able to score a decisive victory alone against American atomic bombers, the small number that Japanese industry could produce would make the odds of victory even greater.

It was expected that with a squadron of veterans flying the Ki-100 that they would be able to massacre the escorts and subsequently the bombers on their own without the need of the J8M’s. Nonetheless they could at least be expected to generate enough havoc to allow minimal interruption for the two passes the J8M was able to make with its limited fuel supply, before the small craft would ram themselves into the nearest bomber. The pilots of the Ki-100’s were also ready to ram American aircraft in lieu of ammunition knowing that that allowing even one American bomber through could spell the death of the Emperor, all took off without parachutes.

Despite it deserved reputation as the finest Japanese fighter of the war, the Ki-100 was not without its faults, ranking highest among these being its operation ceiling. Though theoretically able to climb to a height similar to that of the B-29, it lacked the same manoeuvrability that gave the plane its edge at a lower velocity. These were no ordinary Ki-100’s however. The Ki-100 2, including a newly introduced supercharged engine, was now deadly at far greater heights than ever before.

Nestled amongst the two squadrons of B-29 bombers that would provide physical shield around ‘Bocks Car’ were the P-51 Mustang, a fighter which the Japanese expected they would be able to best,. Though in capability this may have been true, an even greater threat to Japanese plans was lingering in the skies above the Atomic convoy. The new F-82 ‘Twin Mustang’ had been designed to escort B-29 missions between the Solomon Islands and Tokyo with its impressive range, yet the bizarre looking two bodied monoplane was also faster and far more heavily armed than its singular predecessor. It would be the aircrafts debut in large numbers, her pilots having taken crash training courses as soon as the aircraft had entered service in early January 1946. Several of these pilots had not served in the Pacific, only having had experience of the European theatre, a fact that would usually have disqualified them from a mission of such importance but in this case made them especially valuable.

The reason for this illustrates the American suspicion of Japanese involvement in the loss of the ‘Jabbet’ even before the revelations of General Doihara, for in the pairs that would fly the new aircraft, each had at least one member who had experienced combat against the jet fighters of the Luftwaffe. The collapse of the Third Reich had revealed the extent of German cooperation with the Japanese ally and it was now clear that the Japanese had been given patents to produce variants of both the Me 262 and Me 163 fighters, the latter of which possessing such speed that it could theoretically have stalked and destroyed a B-29 without any time for the bombers crew to acknowledge what was going. For this reason experience with the craft was considered vital for the Matsushiro operation, which alongside the superior speed and firepower of the F-82 giving the escorts a somewhat feasible chance of matching the German rocket fighter in case it transpired that the Japanese had indeed been able to produce it, a thought that some were sceptical of. Though only in small numbers, the Japanese pilots of the J8M Shusui prepared to prove their enemies wrong, as their brethren already in the skies began to engage.

The squadron of Ki-100’s were also relying on their enemies underestimation, their line of attack was not the classic head on charge that Japanese fighters were often forced into at high altitudes, their newly enabled powers of manoeuvre instead allowing them to turn rapidly, surprising the gunners of the bomber stream, enabling them to let off several rockets before any return fire could be given from the bombers. Two B-29’s were gravely damaged in this first wave of attack, the first, [i]Joe for President[/i] exploded in mid-air, the wreckage falling from the sky along with its compatriot. The final landing of the badly battered [i]Dominican Dominator[/i] has only added to the mythical nature of the battle. Was Captain Abraham Rivers deliberately aiming at the school that would prove to be his final landing place? Did he believe he was aiming at a military target? Was he even conscious as the burning B-29 crashed down to Earth? In the burning wreckage any definitive answer was buried.

After their initial pass, the Japanese fighters broke up, though this would usually give the American pilots the advantage, the squadron leader was confident in his crafts superior speed to once again trick the Americans into underestimating him, as the P-51’s moved to pursue them they were able to outrun and either turn over on top of the opposing crafts or lead themselves back into the bomber milieu. In pursuing both of these tactics pilot Buraian Humaira would ensure his ace status in Japanese aviation history after destroying three individual Mustangs.

The pilots chosen to defend the bomber craft had been selected for their adaptability however and with the F-82 above them they had a fighter which could turn the surprise around on the Ki-100’s. As the twin mustangs joined the battle the Japanese fighters were preparing to make a third pass yet with the faster American planes in pursuit five would never get the chance to see their enemies send a further Superfortress down in a fiery death spiral. The double bodied fighters were able to fire dozens of rockets without any seeming ability to run out of ammunition, leaving limited options for the Japanese to evade pursuit as they flew amongst the closely packed herd now attempting to immerse the Charles Sweeney’s Silverplate without giving any indication that they were doing so. The chaos the Japanese fighters had hoped to cause was reigning, but outnumbered and outgunned, it was clear that time was running out.

From the ground eight J8M Shūsui’s rocketed into the air two at a time, also wary of the few minutes they would have to ensure the survival of their Emperor. The speed in which the craft fired into the air virtually winded the operator with a rate of climb so fast that the dogfight above became one below before the pilots were barely able to notice. In the stratosphere the stars likely would sparkled as they had for Tetsuzō Iwamoto yet below them there several more glittering objects, these ones within their reach. Like the slash of the sword that gave the rocket craft its name they opened fire in the few seconds they had to target the bomber stream before turning upwards once again for the second cut. The fighters had only been designed for two attack passes and though the second of would destroy two further B-29’s, it remained likely that if one of the American craft was carrying an Atomic Bomb then it would still be in the air, the third pass would thus be a ramming attack that would ensure the odds would be lowered, enabling their colleagues to finish the job.

On observing the ongoing attack the twin mustangs had heightened to meet the banking rocket fighters and unlike any Allied craft who had met them before, they managed to keep up with the craft to some degree of success, exploiting on crafts momentary pause before its final dive, pilots Ben Griffin and Barry Pickton were able to be jointly first in destroying one of the J8M’s whilst in flight. Three other J8M pilots were forced into evading the craft for several vital seconds, running out of time to be able to properly target themselves, they were destroyed as they began to glide for lack of fuel. Of the four which made the final ramming attack only three were successful, destroying further bombers, with the last missing his two second window and being destroyed as he glided back to the ground. Though in a normal raid this might have been considered a successful loss rate for the German wonder weapons, it had failed to provide the decisive blow that the Japanese military too often relied upon.

All hope now relied on the remaining Ki-100’s but their situation was now increasingly desperate as they began to realise they were fighting for their lives against heavier armed and fast opponents. Nonetheless it had been made clear that retreat was not an option, and now they also chose to ram their enemies in lieu of destroying them by conventional means, yet unable to evade the numerous Americans only a few, four in all, were successful, the rest being destroyed before the they hit their target, failing to do enough damage with the impact, or in the case of Humaira, forced into a crash landing, the only one left alive to tell the tale.

The battle was over. Despite the heroism of the individual Japanese pilots, there was now nothing and no-one left to fight the stream that advanced ever close to the Underground Imperial Headqaurters. The skies over their homeland remained American.

In early 1941, the Emperor of Japan had been every semblance of the living God he was purported to be. From the plain hall of white he sat on his throne, passive and divine in his ancient dress, his subjects bowed to him as they had his predecessors When Rome was little more than a collection of farmhouses and stables on a few empty hills. He bowed only to his ancestor, the Sun Goddess herself, as he dwelled on plains of mere mortal thought.

Even then the truth had been very different. The columns of troops, tanks and cavalry that had marched past him in honour of his divinity where nominally under his command yet true control of the domestic and foreign affairs of Japan remained in control of the officers who claimed to be subordinate to him, the Emperor was in fact entirely constitutional, his divine will a rubber stamp for the military junta that governed Japan.

The Japanese philosopher Motoori Norinaga once stated that the human world keeps growing and developing while continuously changing through an eternity of history granted by the divine edict of Amaterasu, of whom Hirohito claimed ancestry. In its view history is not a line but instead adheres to a cyclical approach, according to which there is a constant recurrence of events, in this it was only natural that the tribulations of the Sengoku era, where the Shoguns had enfeebled the Emperor only to bring misery upon themselves, were to repeat themselves.

Though he had never dared use the title, the months preceding the August coup had seen the Anami regime take greater control of what was left of the Japanese war effort than ever before, with the Emperor in whose name they claimed to fight reduced to little more than a fragile ornament, as ineffectual as the evacuated the regalia that adorned his quarters in the Matsushiro Imperial Headquarters. Though they lived in close proximity in the tunnel fortress, Anami and Hirohito rarely interacted, and with the Emperor now effectively banned from meetings of the Supreme War Council, his news of the war was little better than that received by the Japanese populace, where worrying repetitions of exaggerated American casualty figures and promises of imminent victory offered only agonised frustration for the man who had seen the hopelessness of the situation months beforehand. The optimistic declaration that the American advance had been “halted” in Kyushu was of little comfort to one knowledgeable of Japan’s defensive plans. Now the streets of Tokyo were once again full of troops declaring their undying loyalty to the Emperor but the grandeur and might of the ceremony had vanished, as malnourished men and women pulled streetcars to block streets, whilst tanks which could not be spared fuel were fashioned into static emplacements.

It had been clear to the Emperor that the end was near, it had been made abundantly clear when he had still been able to receive access to real information that if the battle for Kyushu failed to be the decisive victory required then there was little chance of finding it when the Americans landed on Honshu. The aborted coup had given him a fleeting hope that the war might end without the need for the final sacrifice of Japanese youth but it had become apparent that this was wishful thinking. It now seemed like the cyclical nature of events had been proven once again, the Anami regime would see to it that it got the glorious slaughter that they had salivated over ever since defeat had become inevitable. Unfortunately for the living God, he had failed to grasp which stage of the cycle that his own destiny occupied.

The Shinto religion headed by the Emperor does not have the concept of the "last day": there is no end of the world or of history. In acknowledgement of the cyclical nature of events, the followers of the Shinto faith stress naka-ima or "middle present", to define the unfolding of history as told by the ancient Imperial edicts of the 8th century. According to this point of view, the present moment is the very centre in the middle of all conceivable times, not only the mortal realm. In this sense it has been considered that the death of God would have its own form of repetition.

The decision of the Japanese government to evacuate its Prime Minister before its Emperor was telling of how the mighty had fallen, yet the strength of their reverence, or at least of those now responsible for the Emperor’s safety, remained powerful enough to instil panic when word came of the swarm of American bombers that were approaching the mountain fortress. The decision over what to do was not aided by this temporary state of anomie, only heightened by news that the attempted aerial interception had failed. The Matsushiro he fortress was designed to survive impacts from ten ton Allied bombs, it could theoretically have survived even a large bombing raid unscathed, yet the possibility of a nuclear bombardment was not once that been taken into consideration during the initial planning. Nonetheless it was also hard to gauge to what area the bomb’s blast would cover in a mountainous environment, and whether an evacuation, either by car or small plane, would be able to cover the distance in enough time with the bombers only moments away.

Thus the decision rested on the former option, as the Emperor, his wife, Empress Kōjun, their young sons Akihito, and Masahito, and the barely older daughters, Atsuko, Kazuko, and youngest of them all, Takako, sat together underneath Mount Minakami where they had dwelled in their effective house arrest for months. As Bock’s Car appeared over the mountain his protectors realised to their dread that the other bombers indeed broken away leaving the signature three of an Atomic attack one that would fall in the valley between the Minakami and Zōzan mountains. Usually such a target would be avoided due to the Mountains absorbance of the blasts energy, such as they had in Nagasaki. With hollowed out tunnels underneath these mountains, it was an effect that was now being relied upon.

Had the construction of the tunnelling system differed, those sheltering underneath the mountains may yet have survived yet the rushed construction using forced labourers had ensured that the facility protecting the Emperor would not meet the standards that its architects had promised. As the mountains shuddered, the concrete interior began to dust, then crack, as the doors of the complex began to contort from the intense heat, before buckling under the blast Under the miniature earthquake the situation inside the Imperial residence would have become one of fire and falling brick as smoke filled the rooms. Whether the charred remains of the Imperial Family died from the carbon monoxide before their bodies had burned has often been left to the interpretation of those describing the event.

For those of the Shinto faith, the burial of Izanami-no-Mikoto was always doomed to repeat itself.

Many had also considered Nagano sacred. In the middle of the mountainous centre of Japan, with little strategic nor economic importance, the city only made sense as a location that the vast migratory wave of refugees would flock to in an attempt to find safety from the meticulous bombings of the rest of the Home Islands.

The Japanese government was not blind to this reality and even before large scale American bombing had begun from bases in Saipan, evacuations to the city where already underway, the first to come where Tokyo schoolboys in the late summer of 1944. These children were largely welcomed into the local community, a situation aided by the fact that they were provided with their own food and their own lodgings. As the bombing worsened, individuals with neither food nor shelter began to appear in the city in the tens of thousands, with the population facing their own shortages this was viewed nowhere near as warmly, refugees often found themselves having to make do with what they had taken with them and as the situation grew increasingly desperate, instances of theft and resultant disturbances increased exponentially. As the cities final evacuees appeared in the form of the Imperial family and their entourage, they were moved stealthily through a city on the brink of a war with itself.

The city had been chosen to be the location for the Imperial Redoubt not only because of relatively unmolested rail and road links it had to the mountains that the fortress would be built under but also due to the Japanese governments view of the population as relatively simple people who could be kept in the dark about the Emperor’s presence nearby. In reality it would prove impossible to keep the nature of the VIP’s under the mountains secretive, as Imperial Regalia was moved under the city, alongside Government civil servants and increasing numbers of troops. The fact that Nagano had become the political and military centre of Japan was a poorly kept secret amongst the local population, despite the rigorous actions of the Kempetai in ensuring that it would never be spoken aloud publicly.

Though there had been fears that such information might cause civil disturbance, the population would show a remarkable amount of calm whilst living in close proximity to such a large potential target. Due to what little flak guns and aircraft produced going to the front, the air defence of Japanese cities had been worse than ever in the late months of 1945 with Allied aircraft effectively flying without opposition as they attacked targets on the Japanese mainland, as such Nagano’s new level of importance gave citizens a sense of security in a nation where there were few truly safe places, a reality that made it all the more attractive for the population to remain inside the city. The presence of various elites also ensured that Nagano was provided with a larger importation of food than most Japanese cities, some of which inevitably trickled down to civilians, whilst the army began to control the number of evacuees entering the city preventing riots that many in the city had feared were inevitable.

Life was hungry and hard but the citizenry slept at night with a security that few others could enjoy, that when the sun rose they would still be alive and that the roof over their heads would remain. The events of February 20th are still referred to today by some Japanese as the ‘National Nightmare’, yet as the sun rose for a second time from the mountains was very much a living torment.

As the tunnels that had housed the remnants of Japan’s governmental and military hierarchies shuddered and collapsed, the Atomic fire came spilling out of the mountainous valley to claim its first victims. The population of Matsushiro was made up largely of civilians despite the significant military presence around the Imperial Fortress, yet Atomic warfare offered no distinction to those who screamed in horrific oblivion as their eyes burned in their sockets and their skin melted from their bones.

The subsequent blast tore the weak construction of the Matsushiro district to pieces, carrying the burned and blinded along with it. Those who had survived the initial heat were now grievously wounded by both the sheer force of blast as well as the terrific heat that accompanied it's wave, as the large parks that surrounded the region were set alight, the looming firestorm surged towards those able to walk, in terror they began to stagger towards the banks of the Chikuma, first to drink as the flames grew around them, before attempting to cross to what they prayed would be a safe haven.

Ever since they had been informed that the Emperor and the Government would be relocating to the outskirts of the city, it had become clear to the city fathers of Nagano that their city might become a target for a heavy bombing campaign. As such plans had been put in place to ensure that a heavy bombing of Mastsushiro would not spread to the rest of city, in doing this however they failed to gauge both the physical and the psychological effects of a nuclear attack.

Japanese civil defence usually operated on the mantra of fight over flee, that civilians should not attempt to evacuate themselves from the fires but actively participate in their containment, this strategy relied upon a solidarity that had already been complicated by the tensions between the indigenous citizens and the refugees from outside the city, as well as a struggle to pass on planning of an expected attack whilst also maintaining that the Emperor was not present in the city. Though these weaknesses may have been weathered ordinarily, the pain of physical blindness and often being blown off one’s feet, only to recover vision to see the looming presence that had featured in American propaganda leaflets and the horror stories of refugees from Yamaguchi and Hiroshima, in the shadow of the Mushroom Cloud the city descended into a panic. The grow rumbled underneath the feet of those now attempting to get as far as possible from the promised ‘Atomic Sickness’ and the flames crossing over from the side of river, carried by debris and the shambling victims whose burns were set alight once more by the blaze.

When the carbon-dioxide content of inhaled air is greater than 30 per cent, it causes diminished respiration, fall of blood pressure, coma, loss of reflexes and anaesthesia. For many of the firemen struggling to cope with the nausea of temporary blindness, many found themselves in the midst of clouds of smoke preceding the fires they had been readied to fight. As the carbon-monoxide content of inhaled air exceeded 1.28 per cent, civilians and fire crew who stayed near the burning front spreading across the city. The population began to flee in a confused riot, as they fought first strangers and then their neighbours in the hope of escape. Across the city the fires spread, untended by the screaming mass of mankind who had chose to try to escape rather than defend homes infected with the whispered rumours of Atomic Sickness that would surely damn them if they didn't attempt to get out.

By the next, the safe haven for over a million people was now so much rubble, amongst the screams for loved ones missing or for the few with medical experience to tend to their wounds, few speculated over the fates of those who had governed the country under the now blackened mountains.

Enshrouded in the rhetoric of militarism, professionalism and elitism, the adherents of the cult of the armed junta that dominated late-Showa period Japan may have liked to see themselves as a strategic mechanism, designed to cultivate feelings of loyalty and emotion that would serve as future pioneers and defenders of empire and its holy sovereign. As the news from Nagano arrived in Tokyo headquarters of the First General Army, with the rumblings of Allied bombs echoing from above, it is a testament to this arrogance that few came to the conclusion that they had utterly failed to meet their delusions. Yet not all were so blind to reality.

The term used to designate the death of the emperor and which may not be used for anybody besides the emperor is borrowed from the word within the Chinese vocabulary, Hōgyo, meaning 'the collapse'.

Or, in its literal form; crumbling, as of a mountain.

Whilst it had been noted that something was wrong when ‘Tokyo’ Radio, which had been moved to Nagano along with many other government ministries, stopped broadcasting abruptly, the sight of a Mushroom Cloud arising over the mountains only came to Tokyo hours after the event and it would take several hours further to confirm that the blackened husks of the mountains which had surrounded the impact around the still burning city could not possibly be harbouring any life.

Those who had feared that Anami was secretly plotting all along to kill the Emperor to install himself in the position were now at their greatest moment of anxiety and had the General chosen to announce such intentions it’s quite possible that he would have faced yet another coup that might have ended the war there and then. Instead he gave little reaction when receiving the news in the middle of a briefing on the continuing transports of chemical shells to the expected American landing zones. With little grace and great exertion he wheeled himself from the strategic briefing room to his private quarters.

In the historiography of Japan’s penultimate wartime Prime Minister, the events that followed have been subject to several different interpretations. It could be argued that the great shame he felt at having failed to protect his Emperor had become overbearing. Others have argued that he had finally come to the realisation that the chain of events he had set in motion were now inescapable by any mortal action, especially as he now sat crippled at a table of younger men who still hoped that he would lead them to the final victory. Emperor Meiji had left Japan dominant over China and triumphant over Russia. He now faced a legacy of Chinese victory, the Russian occupation of Japanese soil and the Imperial Family buried under the crumbling mountains meant to only ever be allegorical. Within the reality of this fact, he had only one honourable outlet left.

There was an inherent tradition within the act. The last mention of suicides of senior subjects at the death of an Emperor would go back to the 5th century and its authenticity is not above serious doubt. On the other hand, the custom of suicide at the death of their lord was en vogue with Japanese military's Samurai descendants until it was severely repressed at the beginning of the 18th century, with threats of reprisals on the families of those who would thus commit suicide. Yet Anami had no-one to suffer his mistakes, other than the nation.

Aides, believing their commander to be in deep meditation in the wake of the appalling news, nonetheless sought to disturb him with reports that several Kamikaze airfields were choosing to throw themselves at the aircraft of the American and British Fleets currently bombarding the coast out of fear that they would soon be destroyed by Allied bombing. They wished to know what orders should be given, was there logic in such a pre-emptive strike?

From the formerly booming voice of exaltation came only a mixture of gasps and gargles, as the white cloth tied around the General’s chest slowly stained red from the protruding blade. His words were barely intelligible but were thankfully recorded by a witness for posterity.

"I—with my death—humbly apologise to the Emperor for the great crime.”

Decisive Darkness will continue in Part 2 – Coronet.

Also available from Sea Lion Press

The Curse of Maggie Tom Anderson

Since 1979 just four men and one woman have occupied Number Ten Downing Street and the office that comes with it, all but one serving for many years. But things could have been different. By contrast, since that same year of 1979, Japan has changed its Prime Minister 14 times and Italy 22 times. What if we lived in a world where Britain was just as much a land of mayfly Prime Ministers as those countries, where no-one since Margaret Thatcher has successfully held the office of Prime Minister for a full five-year parliamentary term? A world where one might almost think that Number Ten was… cursed.

The Curse of Maggie is the tale of another history, a history where our memories of the last three decades are hauntingly familiar yet subtly different, their events shaped by the decisions of many more men and women at the apex of power — but never for very long.

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Fight and Be Right Ed Thomas

Winston Churchill remains one of the most famous figures in modern history.

But if you had asked about Churchill in the late nineteenth century, another political giant would come to mind, one almost entirely forgotten today. Like Winston, he had the ability to coin a memorable phrase and make a great speech; like Winston, he was also a mercurial opportunist with a fondness for drink who delighted in irritating his more genteel colleagues.

Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, had all of his son’s gifts, perhaps even more; but on the few occasions when history remembers him at all, it is as a tragic figure who died early and never quite fulfilled his vast potential.

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In Fight and Be Right, Ed Thomas explores the other Churchill as he shatters the British party system, causes shockwaves in Europe, and brings about a very different 20th century…

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The Limpid Stream Jack Tindale

In the spring of 1917, Vladimir Lenin was taken from his exile in Switzerland, loaded onto a sealed train, and taken to the Russian capital of Petrograd – a city where all manner of revolutionary ideas were in the air. Sent by the German government to add his radical voice to the chaos of the post-Tsarist regime, few would have expected that Lenin would soon preside over the establishment of the world’s first communist state and inexorably change the course of human history.

But what if he had never arrived?

In The Limpid Stream, Jack Tindale postulates a world where Lenin’s assassination on his arrival at Finland Station leads to a divergent Russian Revolution. With the Bolshevik cause robbed of its most charismatic leader, a very different nation emerges. From the bumbling actions of Alexander Kerensky, to the autocratic modernisation of Pyotr Wrangel, to the staunch liberalism of a very different Ayn Rand, The Limpid Stream shows a vision of an almost unrecognisable 20th Century.

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For Want of a Paragraph Tom Black

In July 2008, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, wrote an article in the Guardian that many perceived to be a veiled attack on Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister and Labour Party leader. In the days and weeks that followed, Whitehall was awash with rumours that Miliband was testing the water for a leadership challenge. It never materialised.

What if it had?

In this romp through the heart of the collapsing Labour government in 2008, Tom Black presents familiar faces – the Miliband brothers, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Alistair Darling and more – in unfamiliar scenarios. Can David pull off his coup? Will he have to co-ordinate the whole thing from a train to Manchester? And does Gordon have a secret weapon up his sleeve?

With a little poetic license taken in the name of an interesting story, this tale of Whitehall skulduggery will delight political geeks and amuse fans of House of Cards, The Thick Of It, and A Very British Coup.

Also includes an afterword exploring the real world backdrop of the story, and an examination of why the events of the book did not come to pass.

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The Fourth Lectern Andy Cooke

What if UKIP were given a lectern in the debates in 2010?

They weren’t, of course. Not in our world. But in a world very similar to our own, where the tiniest of changes happened, they were. And things turned out rather differently.

Ahead of the United Kingdom’s General Election in 2015, the populist right-wing, Eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party (commonly known as UKIP) was big news. What if their surge had happened earlier, in the dying days of a Labour Government?

What if four-party politics had taken hold in the last election, in the last moments before the campaign began?

What if the BBC, in attempting to close down arguments over whether the SNP and Plaid Cymru should be in the debates without excluding the Liberal Democrats, accidentally opened the door to UKIP?

The campaign would have been rather different. Election night more so. And the aftermath?

Andy Cooke’s counterfactual of a four-way election depicts a world eerily similar to our own.

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The Fifth Lectern Andy Cooke

What if UKIP were given a lectern in the debates in 2010?

That was the starting point of The Fourth Lectern. That book covered the few weeks around the alternative 2010 General Election, but what would have happened next?

In The Fourth Lectern, the door for the UKIP surge opened in 2010, just before the General Election that year, rather than a few years after it, as in our world. The resulting Government was fragile and a new election seemed inevitable – but was it? For how long could the embattled Prime Minister eke out his time? How long would it be until the next General Election?

And when it was to come around – well, the rules for having a lectern at the debates now seemed clear. And another Party wanted in…

In this full-length sequel to The Fourth Lectern, Andy Cooke continues his story of a world that – had a few ballot boxes arrived on time on a snowy December in 2007 – could have been ours.

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Zonen Tom Black

What if in 1946, an overstretched British occupying force had called on Denmark to aid in the occupation of post-war Germany? Would the world today be radically different? Or would it be mostly the same?

Tom Black’s short story, told as a series of newspaper interviews, explores a present-day Denmark with a slightly different past. An examination of how alternate history need not only focus on great men and decisive battles, Zonen tells a simple human story. Our anonymous narrator meets characters aplenty, from family historians to TV executives and hard-right politicians.

Funny, interesting and poignant, this short story may also teach you a thing or two about the real Denmark.

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Shuffling the Deck Jack Tindale and Tom Black

They’re Prime Ministers. But not as we know them.

Once called ‘the most intellectual parlour game around’, alternate history doesn’t have to be about Nazi zeppelins and steampunk empires. In this dry and witty re-imagining of post-war British politics, the authors take turns to place a familiar Prime Minister in an unfamiliar environment. James Callaghan, the darling of post-war prosperity and Britain’s first ‘television PM’? Anthony Eden, the hero who won the Second World War? To say nothing of the place in the history books held by Margaret Thatcher…

A self-styled ‘bit of fun’, Shuffling The Deck is nevertheless a must-read for alternate historians interested in whether circumstance is more important than ‘great man theory’ would have us believe.

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Meet The New Boss Tom Black

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." - The Who

Many alternate history pieces explore Britain's fate if the United Kingdom fell to Nazi Germany. But few consider what might come afterwards. The chaos of an overextended Third Reich would not last forever. Europe would eventually be liberated. But with no staging post in the Atlantic, isolationism might take hold in the United States, and the role of 'liberator' would be played by Hitler's greatest foe - Stalin himself.

In Meet The New Boss, Tom Black considers a world in which all this came to pass, and Britain found herself squarely in the Soviet sphere of influence. Would Britain's communist leaders be Dubčeks or Honeckers? How would the British national character respond to Soviet, not home-grown, leftism? Through biographies of the various First Secretaries of the Communist Party of the Commonwealth of Great Britain (many of whom may seem strangely familiar), a picture of this different Britain emerges that will please some readers and horrify others.

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Boristopia Tom Black

Boris Johnson is, perhaps, the most well-known 'character' among British politicians today. Once seen as a jovial buffoon with no future in high office, he sought the Mayoralty of London and, through his campaign and then his time in office, became a national figure talked about as a future PM. Widely recognised as one of the canniest minds in politics, Boris has made the most out of every opportunity - and every challenge - that has come his way.

So, what if his rise had been different?

In Boristopia, Tom Black begins the story with the thwarting of Boris' Mayoral ambitions. But rather than being a permanent blow, Boris soon finds that remaining in Parliament has its own advantages. His career path thus altered, he finds himself in cabinet during the Coalition, trading blows with Lib Dems and, eventually, squaring up to David Cameron himself. What follows is a rip-roaring ride on the back of power, the media, and uncontrollable blonde hair. As Boris faces off against Euroscepticism, Scottish nationalism, and parliamentary democracy itself, readers will wonder quite how far Britain will let its PMs go if they can crack a good joke.

Also features an 'alternate ending', for fans of the absurd.

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A Greater Britain Ed Thomas

Today, Oswald Mosley is remembered as one of Britain’s most unpleasant and despised political figures. Yet at the opening of his career he was a rising star of British politics. Charismatic, talented and intelligent, it seemed that that Mosley was destined for greatness. If he had not abandoned mainstream politics for his journey towards fascism, he could have reached 10 Downing Street.

So what if things had turned out differently?

In A Greater Britain Ed Thomas charts the alternative career of a successful Oswald Mosley, who scales the heights of power in inter-war Britain, becoming one of the 20th century’s most influential – and divisive – figures in the process. As Mosley entrenches himself in power, befriends Benito Mussolini and reforms Britain along his own, corporatist lines, it quickly becomes apparent that world history will never be the same again.

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The Bloody Man Ed Thomas

Oliver Cromwell occupies a unique place in British history. While other great, flawed figures of our past such as Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington, Elizabeth I or Henry V are proudly remembered as national heroes, Cromwell - one of England's finest generals, and the person who arguably did more than any other to establish the foundations of modern Britain -commands no such unanimity.

Some still passionately denounce him as a genocidal dictator, a 'prototype Hitler' who introduced military rule to the British Isles, banned Christmas and dancing, and ruled through fear and the ruthless application of force. Others argue that he was a liberator, a noble foe of tyranny and oppression, and the originator of the British tradition for tolerance.

The one thing that can be agreed on is that it is difficult to imagine what might have happened, good or ill, had a certain obscure Cambridgeshire Member of Parliament had not been present to influence the direction of Britain at one of the most tumultuous periods of the nation’s history.

An English Civil War without Cromwell. Let's speculate.

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The Unreformed Kingdom Tom Anderson

It’s the twenty-first century! Thanks to the inevitable tide of historical progress, we live in a liberal and democratic society! Except… that anonymous tide was made of real people making the decision to work to change things. What if, starting with the Great Reform Act of 1832, they had decided otherwise?

The Unreformed Kingdom explores a very different, yet oddly familiar, Britain of a 2015 in which you can download an app to watch public executions, many MPs still represent rotten boroughs, and your religion determines your right to vote. Along the way, we meet some surprising figures from our own world, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, the dangerously modernising Leader of the Tory Opposition, the intellectual patrician American Ambassador George W. Bush, and Jeremiah Clarkson, the controversial Mayor of Doncaster. Will the attitudes of the past rule over this land forever, or is there hope for the cause of liberty from a very unexpected source?

This edition includes a new appendix describing the historical background to the setting and the events leading up to the world of 2015.

Available now.

La Isla Blanca Jack Tindale

The Spanish Armada is today regarded with faint embarrassment. In Spain, it is often limited to a little more than a footnote about a somewhat foolhardy endeavour, whilst in Britain, it’s defeat has gone from being a sign of divine salvation to a serious threat saved my a combination of luck and weather. Had it been successful, there is little doubt that it would have posed a genuine threat to Elizabeth I – with the ill-prepared English army having little chance of success against a vast Spanish force from the south and the prospect of a Catholic uprising in the North. The Armada’s success may well have nipped England’s fledgling superpower status in the bud.

But what if things fell somewhere in between?

In La Isla Blanca, Jack Tindale considers the cultural, economic and political consequences of a foreign occupation of the Isle of Wight and the effects of a humbled England and a strengthened Spain.

Any similarities to Gibraltar are, of course, entirely coincidental.

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Bombard the Headquarters! Steven Digena

In 1971, strange things were afoot at the centre of the People’s Republic of China. With the Cultural Revolution still under way and Mao Zedong at the height of his power, China and the world were shocked to find late in the year that assassination and coup had been in the air, and had subsequently come crashing down in eastern Mongolia. Lin Biao, Marshall of the People’s Liberation Army, and Mao’s constitutionally designated successor was dead in a plane crash, having failed to launch a military coup against the regime he had so long served. The seizure of power, known as Project 571 ended in disaster for its plotters, and anyone who could be accused of having been involved.

But what if their effort to bomb the Chairman’s train had succeeded?

In Bombard the Headquarters! Steven Digena explores the possibilities of what could have happened, had ‘The Great Helmsman’ been assassinated in the fall of that year. What follows is clash of his lieutenants and plotters as military and political factions challenge each other for power, leadership and their own survival.

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Festung Europa: The Anglo-American Nazi War Jon Kacer

The fall of Stalingrad in 1942 leads to Stalin purging his brightest officers. With the Red Army in disarray at the exact moment that the front collapses, Hitler is able to press the advantage and utterly defeat the Soviet Union. No longer facing any threats to the East, the Third Reich concentrates on reorganising Europe and building ‘Festung Europa’ – Fortress Europe.

An uneasy and informal truce breaks out in the West, as Britain and America consider their options. Eventually, in 1954, matters come to a head and the ‘warm war’ turns hot. But the road to a liberated Europe will be paved with blood, sweat, tears and nuclear weapons.

An exploration of the insane cost that Europe would pay under Nazism, and the astronomical price of its removal, Festung Europa is an unmissable war epic from one of alternate history’s most respected writers.

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Union, Travail, Justice Jonathan Edelstein

In 1958, Gabon chooses union with France over independence. In 2015, with the powerful Alain-Bernard Bongo on trial in Paris, two murders in the oil fields reverberate from the Libreville underworld to the heights of French corporate towers, and threaten to unravel a web of corruption that joins politicians, oil companies and organized crime. Can a foreign journalist find the secret that Elf Aquitaine wants to keep buried, and will it shake Gabon’s politics as they haven’t been shaken in sixty years?

Part alternate history, part conspiracy thriller, Jonathan Edelstein's tale of a different post-colonial history for Gabon will grip readers with its twists and turns, all the while raising questions about our own present.

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The World of Fight and Be Right Ed Thomas

In Fight and Be Right, Ed Thomas charted the alternative political career of Lord Randolph Churchill. But what about the strange world that resulted from his dramatic entry and departure from the political stage?

From the ruined streets and totalitarian oppression of Syndicalist London to the Russian 'Robots', and from the Jewish homeland in Australia to Longwood, Florida, home of the American motion picture industry, "The World of Fight and Be Right" explores a completely different, yet strangely familiar, 20th century.

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10 Leaders Britain Never Had edited by Tom Black

‘Great man’ history is flawed. But it can be fun.

A group of alternate history authors try their hand at imagining different figures at the top of the British establishment. Be they Prime Ministers or something less conventional, the men and women in these pages inhabit very different worlds to that in which we live.

Could Britain have had a female PM much earlier in its history? Who might emerge to lead Britain from the ashes of a fascist dictatorship? If Militant had taken over the Labour Party, who might be in Downing Street today?

Sea Lion Press favourites including Jack Tindale and Ed Thomas are joined by newcomers in this volume of vignettes edited by Tom Black.

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Decisive Darkness: Part One - Majestic Paul Hynes

In August 1945, Japan was hit with two nuclear weapons. This, along with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, caused the government to surrender.

What if it had not?

Paul Hynes imagines a world in which a fanatical junta takes over Japan and pledges a fight to the bitter end. Using real-world plans relating to the invasion of the Home Islands, along with an extensive knowledge of American, British, Soviet and Japanese attitudes and capabilities at the time, Hynes crafts a story of harrowing losses, desperate measures, and unspeakable horror for the civilian population.

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Diverge and Conquer (part one of the Look to the West series) Tom Anderson

History can turn on the smallest of things. In the history we know, King George II’s son Prince Frederick was an obscure footnote of history. Hated by his father (who threatened to exile him to the American colonies), his political career cut short when he was fatally struck by a cricket ball, of all things. The Prince never became King Fred and instead the throne passed to his inexperienced son, George III, who proceeded to lose America.

But what if one tiny slight—a trip on a coronation carpet, a misplaced laugh—had tipped George II over the edge and he had made good on his threat? What if, in the year George Washington was born, the American colonies had found themselves home to an exiled Prince stripped of his inheritance? And what if that Prince had ambitions to reclaim his birthright by any means necessary, including with the help of his colonial subjects…?

The Look to the West series begins with the story of Frederick and the very different America that results from his exile, but it is a tale that encompasses the whole world. Every action we take has unforeseen impacts: a revolutionary South America, a defeated Prussia, a divided India, a European Enlightenment transformed by phlogiston theory, Cugnot steam engines and Linnaeus’ Theory of Evolution. Diverge and Conquer covers the history of this world from the time of Frederick to the era when Europe is torn apart by a French Revolution very different to the one we know—and hints at a mysterious future to come…

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The Fiery Crucible Ed Thomas

In "The Bloody Man", Ed Thomas explored what might have happened had a young Oliver Cromwell emigrated to the New World before he had a chance to make a mark in England. Now, the trilogy continues...

It is 1647, and England is slipping back into Civil War. The King has escaped; London is burning; mad Prophets roam the streets and the Army has mutinied. There are many Bloody Men abroad. As the world's history increasingly diverges from our own and the British Revolution gathers pace, Oliver Cromwell consolidates his own power in New England, and casts his eyes over a new prize...

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President Ashdown Is Retiring Tom Black and Jack Tindale

“Welcome to the BBC's coverage of the 2015 UK Presidential Election...”

In President Ashdown Is Retiring, the authors of Shuffling the Deck team up once again to explore the aftermath of a thoroughly modern and fundamentally Blairite republican revolution.

Now, join David Dimbleby and many familiar faces on Election Night 2015, including Business Secretary Peter Mandelson MP, Green Party Lord Senator Robert Llewellyn, a blonde-haired eccentric Mayor of London, backbench troublemaker Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, Alan Partridge, and a great many more. Told (almost) in real time, our increasingly tired journalists and their guests reveal more and more about the world in which they find themselves. It's an election night quite unlike any other, and a must-read for any political geeks who stay up late whenever there's an election on.

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With Iron And Fire David Wostyn

The year is 1912, and the history of China takes a different turn.

The president of the newly-founded Republic of China dies suddenly, before the fledgling regime has had time to take root. As a compromise between the militarist and republican factions, a former reformist leader is chosen to replace him. But he has his own agenda…

What if the Republic of China had died in infancy? With Iron and Fire is the tale of a China that might have been—one in which a new imperial dynasty takes over after a short interregnum, and the descent into warlordism and civil war that wracked the country for decades in history as we know it is pre-empted.

A stable government allows China to become a regional power once again. When the Russian revolution comes, it joins the foreign intervention on the side of the Whites—and once the dust has settled, finds itself with a client state in Eastern Siberia. But China’s very resurgence puts it on a collision course with another rising Asian power: the Empire of Japan. Their rivalry is bound to engulf Asia in flames.

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The Blue Lotus (a 'Fight And Be Right' story) Ed Thomas

In Fight and Be Right and The World of Fight and Be Right, Ed Thomas explored the strange parallel history that resulted from the unlikely political success of Winston Churchill's father. There are many stories to be told in this world. This is one of them.

It's 1934, and as war rages across the globe the city of Shanghai preserves an uneasy neutrality between the rival alliances- until a young journalist is brutally murdered. Can the killer be brought to justice, or is the truth about his death too dangerous to be exposed?

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The Loud Blast That Tears The Skies Chris Nash

1908. The United Kingdom stands upon the cusp of a tumultuous century; a century of far-reaching political, social, and economic change. That change will accelerate rapidly within a few short years, as Liberals found the welfare state and reform the British constitution, and as a Sarajevo gunman plunges the world into total war.

But what if the meteor that harmlessly crashed into remote Siberian forest in the summer of 1908, had instead brought death and destruction to Edwardian London? What if the British Empire, at the height of her confidence and hubris, lost both her capital and her government? What kind of world would have emerged?

In The Loud Blast That Tears The Skies, Chris Nash explores a world where First World War generals rebuilt a shattered Britain, where blood is shed not in the fields of Flanders, but in the streets of London and Glasgow. A world where German engineering put a man on the Moon, and threatens mankind with annihilation. A world where British diaspora preach libertarianism from the American west, and where old Russian revolutionaries are fêted in exile. Told from the perspective of a British political history, it is the tale of a world whose leaders are very different from those we knew - but yet who are sometimes strangely familiar.

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The Yorkshire Assembly Jack Tindale

England remains one of the most centralised countries in the developed world - but does it have to be?

In 2004, Tony Blair's government held an abortive referendum on establishing an elected Assembly in the North East of the country, which voters rejected by an overwhelming margin. Of the reasons given for the failure, chief amongst them was the failure of the pro-Assembly campaign to give a coherent message regarding devolved powers, as well as lacklustre leadership from the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott.

So, what if the government had looked a bit further south? From the Penistone Show to the corridors of power in Bradford Odeon, The Yorkshire Assembly shows a number of scenes from a patchwork United Kingdom.

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Walking Back To Happiness Liam Baker

Harold Wilson was launched into the spotlight as the darling of Labour’s modern left in the leadership election of 1960, challenging Gaitskell and making himself the de facto leader of the Labour Left. His was the promise of a modernising party, committed to shaping Britain into a progressive and technocratic nation, and this promise would be put to the test when he became Prime Minister in 1964. Sadly, it was a test he did not pass and the failures of his government set Britain upon a path of industrial stagnation, social democratic malaise, and the ultimate dominance of the right in British politics.

But, what if Wilson never entered the 1960 leadership contest? What if the original candidate of the left in 1960 took Wilson’s place in British history? In Walking Back To Happiness, Liam Baker imagines a Britain without the false promises of Harold Wilson and the stagnation of Labour’s technocracy. Instead, Wilson is replaced by someone far more radical in his politics and far more telegenic as a personality. In this timeline, the received wisdom of British politics – where radical means unelectable and democratic socialism is doomed to fail – is turned on its head as the Labour Left becomes the party establishment and Britain’s small-c conservatism is shaken by continuous social upheaval.

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Making Murder Sound Respectable Bob Mumby

“Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” – George Orwell

The Fascist and Communist dictatorships left a bloody stain on the 20th Century, leaving tens of millions dead in their wake and a bitter taste in the mouth for hundreds of millions more when they encounter those ideologies. But what if they had never got the opportunity to do that damage?

A world where the Russian Revolution didn’t produce a Communist superpower, and Hitler never found success at the ballot box. A world where the political fears and tensions of the 1930s continued, unmolested by the pressures of total global war.

In Making Murder Sound Respectable, Bob Mumby explores this world through a very different British election night, from the perspective of a group of students watching the results on television. While they worry about what kind of curry they want, events unfold in the background that reveal a glimpse of a radically different world. Communist and Fascist thugs clash in the streets, and foreign commentators pontificate on whether the Union Party has strayed too far from Oswald Mosley’s principles, while far from Britain’s shores the forces which have been contained for a century may yet be unleashed.

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The End, And Afterwards Andy Cooke

It took three things to bring about the End of the World:

- A space drive that was to open the stars to humanity.

- Exiled Warlords willing to blackmail the world to restore their tyranny.

- Their intended victims, desperate to avoid them.

But even though the Earth might be doomed, Hope could still survive..

Pip Allen was desperate to go to the stars after he graduated.

Charlie Jennings was seeking a new life and meaning.

Joe Mbutu was striving to protect his people from the callous Warlords.

Corbin Anders was trying to prevent what he saw as an abomination.

The Endeavour would tie their stories together at the End of the World... and afterwards.

Sea Lion Press' first 'future history' brings the vivid and frightening world of acclaimed author Andy Cooke (The Fifth Lectern) to life.

Available now.